Savannah rarely gets very cold. The coldest I remember was 3 degrees back in 1984, IIRC.
Once when I had moved into a new apartment there was a blizzard. I awoke to find my power out and the apartment getting colder by the second. My mother was in town, staying in a hotel, but I couldn’t call her because my phone wasn’t hooked up yet. Meanwhile my pet birds were fluffing up against the cold.
I put on socks, boots, a hat, a coat, and whatever other clothing I could find and went out for help. Outside in the swirling snow I saw a light. Good, the convenience five blocks down the street still had power. I headed for it.
By block one I couldn’t even feel my feet or hands. I don’t know what the normal temperature was, but I later heard the windchill was -70.
I got to the store and called my mother and she came to rescue both me and the birds. I was still amazed that you could get that cold that fast.
I meant convenience store.
To get an idea of how cold The Pas gets, take Winnipeg cold and then go four hours north. 
-40°C was the norm before the wind chill. And that isn’t even into the Arctic yet. Gives you a whole new appreciation for the Inuit, let me tell you.
Frolicking barefoot in the snow, in a t-shirt and shorts, in Dallas a few years ago. The temperature was around 15, I think. I hate Texas. Moskva, here I come!
… but it was by far the coldest feeling I’ve ever had. I was working at UPS over a winter unloading trucks… you got very warm doing that kind of work so I had my biker jacket with me but underneath I just wore a t-shirt and jeans. When I left work that night it was drizzling… then the temperature started dropping and really really fast. By the time I had driven to the onramp to get onto the interstate it was freezing rain and the streets were like ice rinks. I knew I’d never be able to drive my car in those conditions so I pulled over to the sholder of the road and put on my emergency lights, figuring I’d wait out the ice a bit and see if conditions improved. Well, although I knew better than to drive in that crap nobody else behind me apparently did and I saw 4 cars plow into mine that night one right after the other. They’d come around that gentle curve too fast, hit the concrete guard wall then richochet/slide right into me. Now, after car one hit I got out of my car and into the freezing rain because I figured that I shouldn’t stay inside a metal box being pelted with automobiles. Besides, the engine quit and with it the heat. About 150 accidents were recorded that night in a very short space of time, it was almost an hour before the police got there and I was never so happy to sit in the back of a cop car in my life. My hair had actually frozen in long ice sickles to the side of my head… it was horribly painful, I had actually stopped shivering. Bad sign. Never been that cold since thank goodness.
Its winter in the Thar desert in northwest India outside of an ancient, remote town named Jaisalmer. I’m on a Camel Trek, a 2 day excursion into the desert on camel back.
The proprietor at the inn I was staying at in Jaisalmer had arranged the whole trip and had assured us that we would have adequate supplies.
One can travel very light in India because the hotels are so cheap and the weather is so warm even in winter as long as you stay away from the mountains in the northwest. Because of this I had no sleeping bag and only a light sweatshirt.
Camels are very ornery and the seven of us all had a “driver” riding behind us to keep the camels under control. After arriving at our campsite we had dinner. Soon it was time to go to bed and one of the drivers came around with our bedding. The five females in our group were each given nice large blankets, but the other guy and myself were given ONE 4’ by 4’ piece of canvas to share. I immediately spoke up and said there was no way the both of us were going to sleep under that. After several minutes of arguing, the driver brought over one more similar piece of canvas. I knew we were screwed, but there were seven of them and two of us and I’m sure they had knives.
The day time temperatures reached around 70 degrees F., but the clear nights sent the temperature down near the freezing mark. The sand was very cold and we had to sleep right on it. We approached the girls, but they weren’t interested in sleeping with us or sharing any blankets. We shivered all night long. Finally around four o’clock I got the fire started again. Soon one of the drivers also got up a threw his blanket across my shoulders. I stood up and threw the blanket off and told him what I thought of him in no uncertain terms.
After returning to Jaisalmer, I screamed at the innkeeper long and hard to get a refund for the trek.
One of the best parts of Houston is that the temp never goes below 30 degrees, even at night. I have two “reallyreallyreallycold” stories, one where it was just freezing, the other where I was outside when it was cold, wearing next to nothing.
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Breckenridge, Colorado. Yes, I know that -10 is puny for most of you folks, but when I was used to temps 40 degrees higher, it was cold! I had on longjohns, a camisole, a shirt, a sweater, and a parka, and was still freezing. Blech.
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NYC, fourth of july many years ago. Went out to the beach to see the fireworks. sweater, jeans, flip-flops. It was in the high 50’s that afternoon, not predicted to go much farther. Come 9ish, the temp plummeted. We had found a great spot to watch the fireworks on the beach, but it was quite a ways from the car. We were rushing along the boardwalk, but it just got colder and colder. Then the rain started. By the time we were back in the car, the temperature was in the low 30’s, rain coming down nice and steady. When you are 10 yrs old, thats really friggin cold!
Chicago, winter, near Lake Michigan…something called wind-chill-factor.
Had showered and dressed in a hurry and ran across the street to wait for the bus to come to take me to work.
Suddenly I thought I felt a twig in my hair and I broke it off. It wasn’t a twig, it was a piece of my hair that hadn’t dried, and it had frozen!
That was my last winter in Chicago…love the city, but only in the spring and fall.
Car trouble at 1:00 a.m., my girlfriend and I walked about three miles in near zero temp with just light jackets. Miserable. And she was angry, so no warm-up sex.
And then there was the time I thought it would be fun to take a little spin on my motorcycle at 8 degrees. Made it about four miles before I turned around and on the way back I got so cold my body wasn’t responding to my brain very well.
The coldest I’ve been was when I swam across some Hudson River tributary upstream from High Falls, NY. In April. My legs started cramping about half-way across but I made it.
I wasn’t alone, mind you. This was with my MYF group.
Coldest temperature:
In the Canadian army on an exercise outside Fort Wainwright in Alaska. -58F. We were dressed properly, so we weren’t so badly off. The Americans went back to the base, we remained in our tents.
The coldest I’ve ever felt has been in Hong Kong two years ago in January after just getting out of bed. The temperature was only about 14C, but the flat had no heating other than a small electric fireplace in the living room. The concrete of the building seemed to pull the heat out of you. Gah, I can still feel how cold I was then <shiver>!
Last June, I was camping for two nights in Yellowstone National Park. Being June, I hadn’t thought to pack any, say, fleece jackets, or hats, or gloves. I was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, and a long-sleeve shirt, in my sleeping bag which is rated to 30 degrees. It snowed on us the second night in the park and the windchill must have been in the single digits.
We drove through a blizzard on our way south towards Utah. Neither of were really warm until we got to a hotel in Salt Lake City the next day, took very long hot showers, and put on some fresh clothing.
Note to self: high elevation + northern Wyoming = cold. Even in June.
Well we don’t really do extremes in my part of the world, the coldest I’ve been due to temperature/climate was a 20/30 minute walk across Tallinn city centre (Estonia) just before Christmas '94. It was about 10 or 11 at night, I was leaving the country the next day after a three month stint so had lots of stuff to carry with me so I was going slow, I was new to cold tempertaures and had already been fascinated at how your nostrils start to ‘stiffen’ on the inside below -8°C (17°F) etc. but that night I just remember how long it took my fingertips to thaw after having the circulation limited through carrying a heavy plastic bag and how a plant I had with me just disintergrated … although insulated in newspaper the leaves had all turned black and fallen off. No idea how cold it was, perhaps -20 (around -4°F).
Since then I’ve lived in central/eastern Europe and got trained in living through cold winters. As others have hinted, expectation is all - I used to go camping in the Scottish Highlands at New Year and in February and never suffered from anything more than “oo brrr it’s cold” but the coldest I’ve been due to circumstances was in Nepal, near the Anapurnas. A similar situation to Mangosteen, trekking all day in the hot sun, we wallowed in streams to cool off, distorted the natural order of things by paying for western drinks from a fridge at the last settlement, etc. etc. Then we got a lift on the back of a lorry back to Pokhara. I’m not sure where we started from, half a day’s trek from Tatopani, there was a new road under construction. Anyway it was all fine and dandy to start with … then the monsoon downpour came … then night fell … no real danger of hypothermia but we shivered with the locals as we huddled, half under a bit of tarpaulin in lightweight clothes for unpleasant hours fantasising about hot food and feasting on the glimmer of any cokking fire we passed (I have no idea why we didn’t break out the fleeces in our rucsacks? perhaps we couldn’t get at them).
Isn’t it neat when your face gets so cold that when you smile, it takes a little while for your cheeks to come back down?
Everest Base Camp, March 23 this year. Here I am!
Holy shit it was cold. The wind was 80 - 100 km/h, coming straight down the side of the mountain into the Rongbuk glacial valley, and the ambient temperature was something like -15C. I managed 10 minutes outside.
And the hotel we were staying in had no heating at all (or toilets - my al fresco poop was agonizing). Thank goodness for the down sleeping bags zipped with hoods over the tops of our heads, in which we slept fully clothed.
[QUOTE=jjimm]
Here I am!QUOTE]
Thanks to this photo, all sightings of Big Foot have now been clarified.
That’s “Mr Yeti” to you, pal.
On lift to the top of Stowe Mountain (I don’t recall which lift, but it was over Star or Goat), it was so windy that they were only allowing singles on each seat and they gave us an army blanket… it was -30 or so with the wind chill… in spite of my ski pants/parka. hat, gloves, goggles, etc, it was the coldest I ever was…
Ok, that’s pretty damn cold. :eek: