What is the coldest temps. you have ever experienced?

In Feb 1974, while in the Navy, I was teaching POW Survival school in Brunswick Maine. They decided to send me and 2 others to Canada to go through the Canadian Forces Arctic Survival Course. We went to a place called Crystal City, Northwest Territory. It was so far north, we were about 50 miles west of the Magnetic North Pole. A compass was useless, it would just ping around in a circle. We built our own Igloo and then spent 10 days in it. We got off of the C130 military transport and had a big surprise. It was about 65 deg F onboard the plane and we stepped out into weather that was -35 deg. F. That was the average daytime temp. Our last day in the Igloo, a storm came through and the actual Temp dropped to -65 with an estimated wind chill of -150. And I still haven't gotten warm!

 

-45°F
Norton VT Feb '72

 

The coldest day that I can remember here it was -38°C. Add the windchill and it was probably closer to -48°C. I hope I never feel anything colder!

 

-69 in northern Wisconsin.

dooley

 

-40* in 1989. Froze the paint off an old Scout II we had back then.

 

I was in -40º while visiting my last bf in Canada a few years ago. I really dont want to feel that cold again! haha...

 

Dec. of 1985 (I think) it was -5f. here. My mom and dad went to Texas for my brothers wedding and my sister and I got to stay home and do the chores and keep the house warm....

 

The first Christmas in this house and I was trying to figiure out the new wood burner. When my wife got up on Christmas morning, I had the front door open, the 2 windows in the living room and it was 90 deg. in there!

 

When I was 15, on a Sunday morning I was walking to church. It was very cold and I was curious as to the temperature. So I read our neighbors outdoor thermometer it was -38°F. I did not be leave it was that cold so I continued my walk and read another neighbor -42°F. I was now beginning to think it might be true. The last thermometer was at the barber shop -40°F. O.K. an average of -40°F which is the same in °C , it was a very cold day. It was a lot warmer in church and people seemed to linger a little longer after the service.

Jerry

 

Oh wow, don't ever want to feel that kind of cold. It's 28* right now and thats to cold.

 

-60°F.
I was based in Fairbanks and was home for a couple of weeks. I had to visit the bank and left my tiny house and headed off to downtown. There was a white-out at the time, but that was common in Fairbanks in those days.

White-out or not, I had to get to he bank. It is difficult to describe those conditions. Difficult to describe to someone who has never been in a white-out. The air is filled with tiny ice crystals and you literally cannot see any further than your nose (on any side of your head).
Fairbanks is a bit low and when outside the town; up on the mountain, you can look down and see the tops of some of the buildings sticking out of the ice-fog that is created by the exhaust of auto's that are left to run when folks go into banks, stores and so forth to shop, or whatever.
The view sort of made me think of looking down into the crater where Mt. Bromo isin Indonesia.

Beautiful to see from the mountain, a nightmare to be down there in it.

So, I set off for the bank, my bride and I. We had the mental image of how to walk to the bank in our minds. We followed the side walk feeling the side of buildings and slowly walking until we came to a curb where a stop light would have been. Felt for the pole and the crossed.

When we got to where we thought the bank would be we walked with our arms stretched out in front of us. Bonk the window...then the door. The vertical "door knob". In we went, and it WAS the bank! Halleluja!!

We deposited our checks and went right back out into the whiteness. Wejust followed our plan in reverse.

We walked and turned and walked until we should have been home. Mmmmm.....but we were not home. Now this is when one could panic. Just imagine it--you cannot see anything and you do not know where you are. There for one second, I realized how one could go quite mad. It was a sort of claustrophobic feeling that you get. You just have to suppress it and plod on, believing that you will get where you are going.

"Campfire"! My bride and I debated where we could be. We actually did not know. We mentally re-traced our trajectory after leaving the bank. We ought to be standing on the side of our little house, but we weren't. It dawned on me that we must have gone out of the wrong door at the bank. The lobby had two doors directly across from each other.

So we tried reasoning where we would be then if that were the case. We could not agree on how to find our house, so I suggested that we re-trace our steps and get back to the bank, and see if we indeed had left through the wrong door.

We did that and managed to find the bank again. We had indeed gone out the wrong door. We sat there and calmed down for a couple of minutes and set out again.

You know, the most chilling aspect of the whole experience was that people drove in that weather. Pure madness. I can recall standing on or near a corner and a truck rolling by....VERY close. We could hear the rumbling engine, but could not see it until it was literally right on top of us. Gad!

Well, I was never so happy to find the house. I began calling our husky even before I got home, hoping that she would hear me and bark out a confirmation. No such luck.

When we did get home we arrived on the side of the house and the husky was lying up on top of her house curled-up in a ball all covered with ice crystals fast asleep.

As I reached the corner of the house I called again and she heard me and I heard her whining to be unhitched to come in and be with us. First, I opened the door,though...then I let her in. hahaha.

But what an adventure...and in that terribly cold weather. The bank had a temp up on the wall, but we couldn't see it. I had a look at the thermometer outside at home and got the reading. I still do not know if I can believe the reading or not though.
It was so cold that when I tossed a liter of water into the air it came down as powder. I tried it later on that night when the ice fog had lifted and it was perfectly clear, with stars and some Aurora Borealis now and then.
I wish that I could find the foto to post of me tossing that water into the air.

 

Well Sjoerd, I sure am glad you are here instead of a frozen lump in the snow and a statistic.

Jerry

 

I think it was -45.Lot of people water pipes froze. Glad we had plug in heaters for cars.Even little things like seat heaters have now-back then like sitting on block of ice.