antiX-forum

t got down to at least -15F last night - that was the last reading I saw before I went to bed. This morning, it is very sunny, but it is only 8F, so well below zero still on the Celsius scale.

Good day to work indoors!

@erie: I saw all the trees along the edge of the lake once I scrolled more and stopped focusing on the lake itself.
Your photo of the lake at sunset was beautiful.

@masinick: Yes, the numbers really do matter. Your knees and nose (well, and everything else for that matter) start to go numb faster; you can time it if it's cold enough. And then all the fluids in the car freeze, and the car won't start, if you leave it away from an outlet (for the heater) for too long.

mariel77 wrote:@masinick: Yes, the numbers really do matter. Your knees and nose (well, and everything else for that matter) start to go numb faster; you can time it if it's cold enough. And then all the fluids in the car freeze, and the car won't start, if you leave it away from an outlet (for the heater) for too long.

The coldest temperature that I ever personally experienced was a beautiful, clear, but extremely cold morning in Houghton, Michigan one Sunday morning in the late seventies. It was -38F when I left my rooming house near Michigan Tech to walk two short blocks to my local church just down the street. I wore one of those "Sam McCloud" style light tan leather jackets with the white wool collar, a face mask with small eye and breathing holes, long underwear, etc. I was fine as far as warmth goes, but the thing I remember is that the small hairs in my nose stood on end and felt frozen.

After coming home from church, (where I walked), just after noon I went to my car, an old 1972 Plymouth Duster, which was always outstanding, staring in all weather and conditions. It started, all right, but man, did it grind slowly before catching, but it did start the first time. I gave it time to warm up a bit before attempting to move at all. The oil, transmission fluids, everything about the car were very lethargic, but it did work. I drove slowly downtown to get my Sunday dinner.

Thankfully it was very calm that day. By the time I got my car out, it was probably UP to somewhere between -15F and -10F. That was probably 1978, if I had to guess the year.

anticapitalista wrote:I'm cold when it is less than 10C

Wimp!

eriefisher wrote:

anticapitalista wrote:I'm cold when it is less than 10C

Wimp!

He'd never make it up heah' in Cow-hampsha' doncha know? But even worse, he'd REALLY never make it up in the Copper Country, Lake Superior land. Houghton, Michigan really isn't the cold spot, it's the snowy spot. The COLD spot is Soo St. Siberia, er, that's Sault Saint Marie or the "soo". It can be below zero some years for a week or two at a time (for the HIGH temp) and never cross freezing for two or three MONTHS!

Of course, Mount Washington in the White Mountains of New Hampshire has some of the most severe weather in the world:

Mt. Washington, New Hampshire (Airport)
Updated: 56 min 15 sec ago
Light Freezing Fog
-20 °F
Windchill: -61 °F
Humidity: 100%
Dew Point: -20 °F
Wind: 56 mph from the West
Pressure: -
Visibility: 0.1 miles
Snow Depth: 8.0 in
Elevation: 6266 ft

How about this instead?

Scottsdale, Arizona (Airport)
Updated: 1 hr 1 min 51 sec ago
Clear
78 °F
Humidity: 15%
Dew Point: 26 °F
Wind: Calm
Pressure: 30.15 in (Falling)
Visibility: 10.0 miles
UV: 2 out of 16
Clouds:
Clear -
(Above Ground Level)
Elevation: 1509 ft

I had to smile reading Masinick, "coldest temperature experienced". Brought back memories.

I come from a long line of lumberjacks and for 15 years worked as a timber faller. The coldest I've worked in is around -35 below. It's hard to stay warm no matter how hard you work at that temperature. You try keeping your hands warm on the exhaust of your chain saw. The big machinery (high lead machine) has to stay running all night or it won't start in the morning. Sometimes the machinery runs all week.

The perfect temperature for that kind of work is around 0. You can work hard and stay warm. The snow is powdery and not wet so it's easy to brush off and keeps you from getting too wet.

When the snow gets deep "shovelers" are hired to shovel down to ground level around the trees you are cutting so there isn't wasted wood in a high stump. In deep snow I've had two-three shovelers working ahead of me. The deepest hole I've measured was 13 feet deep. The shovelers had to dig steps so you can get the heck out of the hole when the tree starts to fall. Sometimes when I was working on flatter ground I would jump on the butt of the tree and ride the tree out of the hole. Risky maneuver but the quickest way out if things are going bad. In deep snow you also constantly fight head aches through the day. The saw exhaust builds up in the snow holes and you are breathing it quite a bit.

Those were the days. I miss the work but work was getting farther and farther from home. Which meant I had to camp near the job...an entirely different story.

That's a great story, impuwat! My days at Michigan Tech will always be marked with many memories, most of them positive. It was there that I built the foundations for a career in software. It was there that I also played the trombone in the Jazz Lab Band and traveled around Michigan to promote Michigan Tech, and it was also through the Jazz Lab Band that I was able to travel to Jamaica, play a public concert on a bandshell at a beach, play in several clubs, and get a chance to see another culture in a warm climate during some very cold months between the winter and spring quarter - which was the heart of winter at "da Tech".

Great experiences, great memories, and my brain isn't frozen any more.

I can also remember many very long trips - 560 miles long - between Fraser, Michigan, about twenty miles from downtown Detroit, all the way through the center of the state of Michigan about 300 miles, up to the straights of Mackinaw, across the bridge between the Lower and Upper peninsulas, then another 250 miles+ to Houghton, across some desolate, snow covered roads.

In those days, it was about a ten hour drive on dry roads with the somewhat lower speed limits than we have now, but it was more like fourteen to sixteen hours of grueling travel at speeds often under 30 MPH, sometimes down to 10-15 MPH in the worst of conditions. We learned to take our time after a few experiences where we saw others spin out, wipe out, or even flip their vehicles because of excessive speed. Fortunately, the worst we ever encountered were a few slides, from which we recovered, and wisely exercised much more caution. Others were neither as wise or fortunate.

It's not the temperature that gets you, folks, it's the differential. I discovered this when I picked up stakes and moved to Japan after a lifetime in sunny and warm Southern California. There I was, standing curbside on midwinter Hiroshima streets, awaiting buses and streetcars and layered underneath every piece of clothing I owned but frozen to the core with bone-chilling cold. I was an object of amusement to the bands of school children--laughing, pointing at me, and dressed in nothing but shorts and light cotton shirts.

I learned that real cold comes from the difference between where you are and what your blood has been used to. What seemed to me the worst cold any human should have to endure was a direct result of my Southern California blood, thinned out by years of baking on the beaches of L.A. Seriously, the blood actually thins out. That's why Hiroshima, which ain't all that cold to normal folks who know what the change of seasons is like, really is a frozen hell for us California boys.