What is the coldest you have ever been ?

[Joel/ak]

Temps don't bother me, I can dress for anything.....except hot summer days, cops get involved then...lol

It's the wind that sucks.

 

[Jstpssng]

Can't say I like 20+ below for days at a time, but I do miss real winter. And snow. Especially snow.

It's been so long since I've seen that that I've forgotten what it's like. If it ever comes back I'll have to buy a new woodstove... one which allows me to clean the ashes from beneath. Even today the firebox is half full of coals... but it's warm in here!

 

[ning]

I was cleaning out my garage in Spokane one fine winter day and figured I'd run my Harley (1200 sporty I had at the time) for a while while I was doing stuff

then I'm like screw this, I'll just hop on for a quick ride

levis
tshirt under the basic leather jacket
not winter gloves
0*F

only rode for about 20 minutes, my skin was on fire it from the chilly air blast, I got home before I went hypothermic and took a hot shower

 

[masseyrider]

It was winter 77 or 78.
I was 16-17.
Lost my driving priviliges so I was doing a lot of walking.
Went to a party with friends in someones car.
Clothing, tight jeans, light disco shirt, short leather jacket, disco style shoes.
I was hanging around trying to pickup a girl when my ride left.
I set out around 3am on about a 5 mile walk back home. It was 0 F and snowing and wind.
Nobody to hitch with, kept on walking and walking. My thighs were starting to burn, couldn't feel my fingers or toes. Lucky I was a long hair so my ears didn't suffer to badly.
By the time I made it to the backdoor I couldn't put the key in the door. Good thing the dog woke everybody up and I more or less fell in.
Sober, just frozen, couldn't stop shaking for like ever.
When I could finally get undressed and took a warm shower anybody looking at me would have thought I was a girl.

My wedding tackle had retreated that far up.
Took me the whole next day to feel better.
Lots of hot chocolate and noodle soup.
Strangely enough no frostbite damage. Lucky, young and stupid.
If I had been in a similar situation for some reason at 40 years + I'd have died in the ditch.
I did get my driving priviliges back. Thanks Mom.

 

[camshawn]

We were camping in Banff in mid November one year. It was about -20c and everything was fine. The cold front was coming and -25 to -30 was in the forecast so we headed back towards home on the west coast. The cold caught up with us the following night when we stopped. We awoke to the camper frozen up inside. The truck started after a few cycles of the grid heater But it wasn’t happy. Best guess was the temp was about -40 based on how frozen the inside of the camper was and the thermometer at the 1st coffee shop we found to get warmed up in. Cam

 

[Gem99ultra]

-50F in Alberta winter of 1979 West wind blowing at around 20-30mph. I had to stop and put a makeshift winter front (cardboard oil case) on my truck (318 Detroit) so I could get some heat in the cab. Frost bit all 8 fingers. I was smart enough to cut the wire for the cardboard in the cab, rather than outside, but I couldn't bend the wire with gloves on.

Dangerously cold! Deadly cold! I can only hope I never experience anything like that.

 

[Oaktree]

I was cleaning out my garage in Spokane one fine winter day and figured I'd run my Harley (1200 sporty I had at the time) for a while while I was doing stuff

then I'm like screw this, I'll just hop on for a quick ride

levis
tshirt under the basic leather jacket
not winter gloves
0*F

only rode for about 20 minutes, my skin was on fire it from the chilly air blast, I got home before I went hypothermic and took a hot shower

Did something like that once myself. It was a late March day not too cold (mid 20s maybe). Had to run some errands, figured I'd save on gas (this was in '74...odd-even gas rationing in effect) and take the bike. I wasn't dressed a whole lot warmer than you were, man was that cold!!

 

[ning]

Did something like that once myself. It was a late March day not too cold (mid 20s maybe). Had to run some errands, figured I'd save on gas (this was in '74...odd-even gas rationing in effect) and take the bike. I wasn't dressed a whole lot warmer than you were, man was that cold!!

It was so cold that in the moment it didn't feel cold, really strange sensation. Not advised...

 

[jjeff]

It was so cold that in the moment it didn't feel cold, really strange sensation. Not advised...

Had that happen to me i don't think some people understand that sensation unless it's happened to them.
I do feel if you ever get that cold it's time to pull it together and get warm ASAP.

 

[Jstpssng]

Had that happen to me i don't think some people understand that sensation unless it's happened to them.
I do feel if you ever get that cold it's time to pull it together and get warm ASAP.

That's a sign that hypothermia is setting in.

 

[Gator6x4]

OK. Dumb question. Why do the new guys have to walk 3 minutes in shorts and a t shirt in -85F weather? Also, once it is -85F does the wind chill really matter anymore.

At -85F wouldn't your skin freeze immediately upon contact?

Seems just plain weird to do that to anyone.

MoKelly

I think they call that hazing.

 

[ning]

That's a sign that hypothermia is setting in.

I've had that sensation jumping into an ice-cold lake as well (like, there's a snowfield into the lake with some visible underwater).
Not hypothermia, yet. Give it a minute though and it would be, but I pretty much bounced off of the surface of that lake I got out so fast.

Here's a great video, off topic as it is:

 

[ning]

OK. Dumb question. Why do the new guys have to walk 3 minutes in shorts and a t shirt in -85F weather? Also, once it is -85F does the wind chill really matter anymore.

At -85F wouldn't your skin freeze immediately upon contact?

Seems just plain weird to do that to anyone.

MoKelly

Definitely not an OSHA approved practice and hopefully will get someone in official trouble before a sudden storm blows in and kills a hazee.

-85F would immediately freeze flesh on contact... with more than the extremely dry air there. I wouldn't be surprised if they lost the outer layer of skin in the process but believe it or not dry air doesn't carry much heat away. Touch -85F metal and you're losing a chunk of whatever touched that metal, but that's because the density of metal (high) and the heat conductivity (good).

In fact it's possible to build a non-insulative mechanical pressure suit for astronauts to survive in a hard vacuum instead of wearing their portable atmospheric pressure suit - the skin can actually be exposed to a vacuum as long as there's some mechanical support, and so wearing a supportive mesh is actually sufficient to operate in a vacuum (except for the eyes, nose/mouth/respiration, and ears - you still need an environmental helmet - and I'd recommend a codpiece as well) - even though space is effectively very close to absolute zero. How does a mesh protect you against nearly absolute zero temperatures? It's simple - there's nothing in a vacuum to carry your heat away, so the only heat you lose is actually via (black body) radiation. Compared to the incomparably hotter (-85F vs -450F) metal, a vacuum is much less dense (1 atom/cm3 vs 7.85 g/cm3 for steel) and absolutely terrible at heat conductivity. You're actually at greater danger of overheating in space than freezing, especially if you're exposed to the sun (incident radiation is far higher than your emission).

This is related to -85F in Antarctica because the air is so dry there that there's very little matter contacting the body and allowing convective heat transfer - the absolute humidity is often 1/5 to 1/10 that of more temperate places. Water in the air affects your temperature more than oxygen and nitrogen because if a little bit of water - even a microdroplet - touches your skin, it will absorb a ton of heat from your body in the process of evaporation (it takes 1 calorie to raise 1 cc of liquid water 1 degree C, but it takes almost 600 calories just to change 1 cc of liquid water at 0C to water vapor at 0C). If there's no water at all in the air, it will barely cool you unless it's really dense; dry normal pressure air doesn't affect body temperature very much.

 

[Jstpssng]

^^^^
I actually understood most of what you just wrote.

I didn't know ANY of it.