January 16, 2011
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Where F Meets C
It hasn’t gotten there yet. The temperature scales cross at -40°, and it is only about -38° now. It is already cold enough that our compact fluorescent porch and yard lights won’t light. If left on for a day or two, they might. Several winters ago, one was left on for 36 hours before it finally started to glow. It’s crisp out there. Wood splits easily, and if anyone was foolish enough to try to zip or unzip a plastic zipper, it would shed teeth. My radial tires would take miles of bumpity bumping along before they’d round out after being parked overnight… if my car would start. It hasn’t run since the weekend before Thanksgiving.
Such extreme cold is rare in this valley. At higher elevations and latitudes, it’s not that rare, but I have seen cold this deep only about ten or a dozen times in the 27 years I have lived here. The coldest it has been in that time was off the scale, more than 55 below, and I really don’t want to be that cold again. At temps that low, oily lubricants become adhesives and some metal car parts such as hinges and door latches, are as brittle as plastic.
Greyfox experienced forty below for the first time in his life during his first winter here, twenty years ago. Afterward, he said, “The best thing about forty below is that it makes zero seem warm.” I agree. I wouldn’t mind a nice warm zero day right about now.
Comments (8)
Time for you to start gauging the temperature in Kelvin instead of Fahrenheit: it might psychologically make you feel warmer. You’re still at 234 K above absolute zero!
@notforprophet - Thanks for the temp reading. I’ll use that when I post this on FB.
I can send warm thoughts! After being really cold and in the negatives suddenly we are 40 degrees and its a slushy wet mess out there. I survived 40 below one year while living in Alberta. With windchill it was beyond ridicuolous!! You couldn’t breathe without something covering your breath and the very tips of our eyelashes were frozen as well as our eyebrows. We travelled in a bus to Edmonton from Calgary and it was so cold that we had to slow down every few minutes because the heater in the bus couldn’t defrost fast enough. So think warm, keep the fire going and good luck!
That’s sorta how I feel about the minus degrees. Now that it’s in the single digits & lower double digits… feels like a heat wave!
Stay warm. Hope it doesn’t get any colder than it already is!
Crazy cold!!
Wow, that is indeed much too cold! I hope you’re staying bundled up and warm as much as possible.
whoa, my goodness, what a psychological battle it would be “thinking warm”. hope the spring comes early for you.
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