There's a story on Yahoo's news page right now about some places in Russia where the temps were recently minus 88.6 degrees F. And, yes, people live there. I find that inconceivable (cue Wally Shawn...).

Vodka, lots of vodka.......

Colder than some places on Mars. Dang.

I was in Fairbanks Alaska for a meeting several years ago and it was -45. I mentioned the cold to some hospital staff that I was meeting with there and was told that -45 wasn't that bad and -65 was really cold

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Originally posted by TXJIM:
I was in Fairbanks Alaska for a meeting several years ago and it was -45. I mentioned the cold to some hospital staff that I was meeting with there and was told that -45 wasn't that bad and -65 was really cold

Durn, it was cold in Fairbanks in the summer when I visited!

Al Gore is not opening his big trap!

Was in Fairbanks a number of years ago and was driving back after dinner one evening and passed one of those signs that display temperatures and it said -35°....and yes, it felt like -35°

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Originally posted by amals:
There's a story on Yahoo's news page right now about some places in Russia where the temps were recently minus 88.6 degrees F. And, yes, people live there. I find that inconceivable (cue Wally Shawn...).

Those temperatures were from Oymyakon. That town is in competition with Verkhoyansk for the coldest permenantly inhabitated town in the world. Verkhoyansk holds the record with -89.2 F.

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Originally posted by Sunset_Va:

quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:
I was in Fairbanks Alaska for a meeting several years ago and it was -45. I mentioned the cold to some hospital staff that I was meeting with there and was told that -45 wasn't that bad and -65 was really cold

Durn, it was cold in Fairbanks in the summer when I visited!

On that trip I arrived at night and was driving to my hotel past a row of bars. I observed a local exit a bar and start down the sidewalk in shorts and a hooded sweatshirt....

quote:

Originally posted by TXJIM:
I was in Fairbanks Alaska for a meeting several years ago and it was -45. I mentioned the cold to some hospital staff that I was meeting with there and was told that -45 wasn't that bad and -65 was really cold

I was managing an oil & gas project a few years back. My office was in Anchorage, I had fabrication going on in Fairbanks (plus a few other cities/states/countries), and I had construction underway on the North Slope. Inspector pay was the same in Anchorage and Fairbanks, but they got a nice bump for the Slope. My Fairbanks inspector called with a memorable, profanity laced critique of our pay scale as he was getting paid less money working at -45 in Fairbanks than his counterpart at -25 on the Slope. I didn't have the heart to tell him it was above zero in Anchorage.

Kudos to anyone who can live in constant subzero temps.

About a decade ago we fell to -18 or -19 in January. The coldest I ever remember around here was -21 officially, also in January, 1995 I think.

With the wind, it was DAMN cold! Painfully cold!

Normally, dipping into the single digits in January or February is about as cold as it gets.

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Originally posted by striker1:
Kudos to anyone who can live in constant subzero temps.

About a decade ago we fell to -18 or -19 in January. The coldest I ever remember around here was -21 officially, also in January, 1995 I think.

With the wind, it was DAMN cold! Painfully cold!

Normally, dipping into the single digits in January or February is about as cold as it gets.

I was a student at Purdue when that happened. We hit -30 w/o windchill. They cancelled class one day, but didn't cancel a 2nd day because "we don't cancel class 2 days in a row". It was 1 degree colder on the 2nd day. I bought some meat from the Purdue meat locker and it was warmer in the walk-in freezer than outdoors. The other memorable thing about those two days is it was the first time I saw the movie Blazing Saddles.

I made it through a couple Alaska winters before I experienced colder than those two days at Purdue.

I feel better now!

Heck I remember shaking doors during the night at -20 in Northern MN in the late 70s.

I've experienced a claimed 100F with wind chill, -30F air temp. I cannot imagine there being 88 degrees to lose from zero F.

Winter 1978 there was a large low pressure ridge over most of Oregon State. Multnomah Fall froze solid, people actually drove across the ice on the Columbia at I-5/Vancouver.

Much comparison with the previous lowest temp in the are, sometime in the 1930 IIRC.

Our own temp went to -20, then -30F....after about a week it hit -35F on our thermometer. Considerable less fun at -35F (without 'wind chill factor) than -25. Yes, even in those days we heated entirely with firewood....if you could chip a chunk loose from the wood pile.

Living very rural with minimal resources and basic junker fleet of vehicles to help us survive/respond to any additional threats to life & limb helped suddenly focus on what 'be prepared' might mean, beyond a spare can of cocktail wienies.

I once had a girlfriend who could not understand negative temperatures.

She wanted to know, "How can the temperature be less than nothing?"

9 degrees here in Nashville with wind chill of around 0............ THIS is plenty cold for me!

Heck it's 6 degrees here right now, all of a sudden I feel warm.

The lowest we have had it in my part of N.C. is +9 and that is toocold to suit this ole southern boy.

I lived a couple of winters in Ind. in the early 60's when I worked for my BIL and saw it -18 a couple of times, that's when I said if I ever get back south i'ma stayin put and so far that has held true.