Another Fairbanks, Alaska entry:
-55F during the last winter I was up there (1989), and that was actual temperature, not wind chill, and I worked outside in it. That was the winter I decided to get the hell out of there. 
Inuvik, NWT during an exercise involving us and a few Russian Bears doing fly-bys in the late 90s; -52 C plus a windchill in the -60s. I’ve lived on the Prairies most of my life and a good chunk of that in Winnipeg and I have never experienced cold like that before of since. God forbid you ever shut the truck off because you’re not going to restart it…
I grew up on the tip of Northern Maine so I really couldn’t tell you. It’s like asking a fish, “what’s the wettest you’ve ever been?”
When I tell people down here (Oregon) that in the winter in Fairbanks, if you wanted to go out somewhere, you’d carry two sets of keys and leave your car running and lock the doors, they look at me like I’m crazy.
That’s a level of cold that unless you’ve actually lived in it is very difficult to describe.
Another anecdote…I moved to Fairbanks from Southeast Alaska where while it got cold (hit -5F every once in a while), it was nothing compared to Fairbanks. The first winter in FAI during the first real cold spell I went out to unplug my car (oil pan heater, battery blanket) in the morning and the extension cord was a cheap model and it shattered into about 5 pieces when I went to unplug it. That was the moment that I realized what real cold was.
Hey, I’ve been there! Drove up one summer from Anchorage in the RV just to say I’d done it.
I know that! That’s -40[sup]o[/sup]! I know something, I know something! Ha-ha! ::Charlie Brown Happy Dance::
in Indiana its not unusual for it to be anywhere from 40 above to 40 below in the same week or two … but a few days before xmas it was 19 above in the socal high desert … but our winter is usually between thanksgiving and Christmas after that it dosent usually get below 50 during the day … with the once a decade or two dusting of snow in jan/feb
I don’t remember exactly which year it was; it may have been 1983, but there was one year in high school when my friends and I all went out Christmas caroling when it was in that insanely cold range. Everyone thought we were insane, and perhaps we were. It was definitely 60+ degrees below zero.
We were hardcore, though - there was something rattling around in my boot, and I remember just hoping that it wasn’t my toe! On the bright side, every house where we caroled invited us in for hot chocolate and cookies.
Despite having lived much father north for most of my life, for a long time my record was (if memory serves) -23F (-30.5C) from when I lived in West Virginia in the early-to-mid 1990s. I hit my new record a few years ago here in Maine when it got down to -27F (-33C). That’s not all that cold by Maine standards. I’m lucky to live in the southern part of the state.
Easily it was about -35F in northern Hokkaido, Japan. I was startled to realize it was so cold that the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales were close to crossing each other. It’s a mathematical reality that I was aware of, but it really hits home when you physically feel it sucking the heat from your lungs.
I have experienced -35 deg F in Northern Vermont nearly that low in upstate NY.
Yet ANOTHER Fairbanks entry: -58 F in, IIRC, February of 1979. Actual temp, not wind chill. I got dressed in my down filled parka and insulated boots and paraded up and down the sidewalk next my apartment building, just so I could say I did.
-30 in Banff.
My god in heaven, that was some kind of fucking cold. I am a Texan. I knew I was going somewhere super cold, and did my damnedest to pack and dress appropriately.
A brisk 10 minute walk in that, though… I’m going to say it took me the better part of an hour before I felt fully warm again once I was indoors. I was shaking and chattering and seriously, I thought if I’d had to stay outside for much longer that I would not have made it. Probably I’m being a little dramatic there, but I mean, that cold actually HURT when you breathed.
Here in Texas, I think the coldest I can ever remember was maybe -5. And that might have been a wind chill, I can’t remember.
-13F/-25C in Winnipeg. My flight was very late, and I trudged out to the parking lot to get my rental car. The car wouldn’t start and I had to hurry back to the rental car counter to get another car.
The worst part was going out to get my car the* second *time.
-40 in Minnesota, where I went to college. We usually had a number of days below zero but -40 was unusual even for that area. The sensation of the inside of your nose alternately freezing and thawing as you inhale and exhale is very odd. And if your eyes water at all, your eyelashes freeze together.
Close to -40C several times here in Ottawa (world’s second coldest capital city after Ulan Bantor). It’s been well below -20C several times already this winter, with another cold spell starting later this week. “You may be Canadian if the air makes your face hurt!”
I don’t keep track, but not all that cold. Probably around -15°C or something like that. We’d regularly get -5°C each winter, and I’m sure it dropped even lower on occasion, but I can’t cite anything for certain.
I have been up on mountains (at ski-field heights, that kind of thing), but that was surprisingly warm.
When I was in college in the early 90s we had a brutal winter that didn’t get much snow but was extremely cold. There was a span of several weeks where the temperature stayed below zero. They actually canceled classes one day due to cold (again, no snow, just cold) and it was the first time classes had been canceled due to cold since the 1800s. I don’t remember exactly how cold it got but the average for that time span was in the negative double digits.
I don’t remember the exact temperature, but one December in Minneapolis is as cold as I can ever remember being. Airplanes sounded different in the sky is was so cold.
I may be pulling the number out of my ass but I want to say the temperature was between -35 and -40. I also want to say that the windchill was close to -60.