40 Below: cultural education for latitudinally challenged

Poststructural Pub
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We’re having a bit of a cold snap in Interior Alaska right now. The temperature has been hovering around 40 below zero all week. For those who would like to learn about life in cold weather without actually having to experience it, here’s your chance. :smiley:

First of all, -40 is a “perfect” temperature but in only one way: you don’t need to designate Fahrenheit or Celsius because the two scales agree at -40.

Contrary to what you may have heard, -40 IS noticeably colder than -20, and -60 is much worse than -40. There is no “cold is cold” at which it really doesn’t get any colder. We consider -40 cold but it isn’t close to record-breaking cold.

The classic -40 entertainment is to go outside with a steaming hot mug of coffee and toss it up into the air. The droplets make a crackling noise as they freeze before hitting the ground. (If you just pour it onto the ground it won’t freeze before it hits; you need to separate it into smaller drops and give it more time in the cold air, both accomplished by tossing it upward.)

If you walk outside for long (30 seconds?), you’ll notice that if you take a deep breath through your nose, the inner surfaces of your nostrils will freeze together momentarily. If you’re going to be out longer than that, you ought to dress carefully: warm socks and boots, an extra layer or two on the legs, a warm parka, neck gaitor, hat & hood, and warm mittens. Avoid exposing skin. If you’re with friends, you need to keep an eye on exposed patches on each others’ faces (tips of noses, cheeks) for white patches where the skin is starting to freeze. You’ll notice that the outer fabric of your parka feels stiff; it loses some of its normal flexibility at -40.

Elementary-school children in the public schools don’t get to have outdoor recess when it’s colder than -20 F, so if you’re a teacher, you and your charges will probably be going stir crazy during a cold spell.

If you (addressed to a “southerner”, and you’re almost all “southerners” from the perspective of those of us living at 65 degrees North) and your vehicle were transported to Fairbanks right now, your car would probably not start after sitting overnight. Our cars are equipped with various electrical heaters, and our homes and many parking lots have outlets to plug in our cars. Most cars have an engine block heater and an oil pan heater. Some have a battery blanket or a trickle charger for the battery.

If your car WAS plugged in and you got it started, you would find that it feels very odd at first. The rubber of the tires is frozen with a flat spot where the car has been sitting, so it feels like you’re driving on square tires until they warm up enough to make the rubber flexible again. This is exacerbated by the virtual unresponsiveness of the car’s shock absorbers. The car’s seat even feels stiff because the springs inside are so cold. (Except for those who have a luxury I covet: heated seats!) The steering is stiff, too, and if you can avoid it, it’s a good idea not to make any sharp turns until things are warmed up a bit.

In blatant disregard for a completely unenforced local ordinance banning leaving cars running unattended, MANY people leave their cars running as they do errands, such as grocery shopping. In reality, once your car is warm, it will stay warm enough to start again with no trouble for several hours. All those idling cars do is keep the interiors warm for spoiled shoppers, AND add to –

ICE FOG. Nasty stuff. Like regular fog except it’s frozen, and by virtue of being frozen, it doesn’t dissapate easily. (Review your basic high school chemistry: energy of phase change. It takes a lot of energy to melt the ice crystals and turn them to liquid, and a lot more to dissipate the liquid fog.) Air can’t hold much moisture at -40, so all of the vapor kicked out by vehicles and other combustion devices (furnaces, power plants) condenses and freezes into ice fog. Some of us are lucky enough to live on the hills, above the ice fog that fills the valley, so we know that it’s a gorgeous clear sunny day with an incredible blue sky. Down in town, in the valley, you can’t see the traffic light 100 feet ahead of you, but up in the hills we can see the mountains that are over 100 miles away.

The bright side of -40 is that when it warms up to -20 it really feels nice. :laughing: They’re predicting highs of -10 (F) this weekend, which will be lovely.

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Canadians know how to plug in a car. We even know about square tires.

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Interesting. I’d always heard that you can hear your spit freeze at 40 below; good to hear from someone who’s experimentally verified it. A Southern friend of mine twisted this into you could hear your piss freeze – I challenged him to whip it out at 40 below and hear himself get frostbite on a very sensitive appendage.

I’ve never seen 40 below – 30 below a few times. Even I, who shun any more clothes than are absolutely necessary, wore a scarf across my face when it got 20 below or colder. The best thing about those cold waves is the end – I can remember when we wouldn’t see anything above zero for a few weeks, if it got up to 15 or 20 F, everybody would be walking around with their parkas open and no hats or mittens on.

I moved south of the Mason-Dixon line for a reason. I don’t hate cold but I don’t like it either. My big complaint living in Maine was the length of the winters rather than the severity, plus the short nights. When it’s cold for five months a year and the sun sets around 3 PM or so, I get depressed.

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Ah yes. I wasn’t including Canadians in the “latitudinally challenged.” :wink: Canada gets cold. Parts of the “Lower 48” get cold, too. People from Minnesota move to interior Alaska and love it because our weather is so much nicer than Minnesota. :laughing: One really great thing about Fairbanks is that when it’s really cold, there is very rarely any wind, and that makes a big difference. Of course it also creates our cold-weather air-quality problems.

And I have to admit, I don’t ENJOY this cold. I’d be happy if the temperatures could be capped at +80 and -20 F. A 100-degree range seems to me like plenty for humans to endure over the course of a year.

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We’ve had 50 degree differences in the course of a DAY here!

Of course, we usually have tornados when that happens.

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Well, give me 5 to 105 then. 105 in the shade, with a little breeze – ahh, nice! Maybe 10 to 110…

Seriously, thanks for your initial post there, very interesting…I’m sure I’ll visit Alaska sometime. In the spring or summer. I know I’m weak.

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:boggle:

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Most excellent, Sarah. :laughing: I actually caught myself complaining about our long, cold winter today…thanks for putting things in perspective.

We get cold like that here occassionally, but it isn’t the norm. I remember the winter of '90-91, up in the Bighorn Basin (both the icebox and the oven of Wyoming, depending on the time of year), changing a car battery at -50F with a 10mph breeze. Work for 15 or 20 seconds, then stick hands into armpits until the fingers will move again, then another 15 or 20 seconds of work…It’s amazing how much a person can get done in 15 seconds when properly motivated. After that, I’ve made it a point to always have at least one friend with a heated garage.

Ice fog does make the trees pretty, though!

Tom

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If you jump into the air will you disperse into droplets that freeze before they hit the ground?

Does the wind blow much up there? That (if nothing else) would be the deal breaker. We spent a Christmas break in Niagara Falls once, and that was quite enough, thank you!

I agree with Chas’ point. Most of us can take a bit of that kind of cold, and actually find it interesting. But not so many can spend an entire, extended winter with it.

Well, good luck with the rest of the season! I’m glad people come in all tolerance levels so we don’t all have to crowd in here in the temperate zone.

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Ditto. Many people around here complain about the summers, but I find them just about right. 5-6 months long, not too many days above 95, seldom days above 100.

Now if we could just lose those Asian tiger mosquitoes. The other reason I settled around here was the lack of mosquitoes, then these damn things move in.

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I heard mosquitos are Alaska’s state bird…

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See http://www.alaska.net/~ldn/ for the cover picture of Lou Nathanson’s CD “Genetically Enhanced.” A VERY funny album, and it contains what ought to be the Alaska anthem, “Duct Tape Madrigal in C Major.”

Yeah, it is nice that we don’t all have the same preferences! I would find 95 with humidity a horrible experience. I like summer, but that’s partly because it’s short and sweet. I can manage 7 months of winter, but 5-6 months of summer would not be my cup of tea. Even with ice in the tea. :stuck_out_tongue:

The large of amount of clothing that we wear prevents the dispersion into droplets. Picture the little kid in that Christmas movie who’s so bundled up he can’t move his arms.:laughing:

Thankfully, no. It’s pretty still at ground level. My banjo-playing friend lives off grid and has a wind generator on an 85-foot tower (and he also lives high on a hill) and at that elevation, the wind turbine is almost always spinning. It’s optimized for a low wind speed. We recorded our CD there using wind power.

WyoBadger: -50F and bare fingers. OUCH!

Yikes! :boggle:
We find that a lot of plastics shatter easily in the cold. We have to buy kids good-quality backpacks with cordura fabric, because the cheap plastic-y ones split in the cold.

One last one:

We’ve had that too, but luckily minus the tornadoes. A couple weeks ago the temp warmed from -30 to +30 in a little over 24 hours.

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One would think XC skiing equipment would be designed to handle the cold. But the again, I’ve had my bindings rendered inoperable by ice in weather over fourty degrees warmer than that.

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There was a particularly nasty NY winter once while I was in high school. There, wind chill is often what makes it bitterly cold out. I remember that one day school was cancelled because with wind chill the temperature was -65 out and children were at risk of frostbite if they went outside to wait for the bus.

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Growing up in northeastern Tennessee, the coldest winter I can remember hit -24F, though lows in the +teens were more normal.

Here in western Washington, it rarely drops below +20F (except up in the mountains). The coldest I can remember at our house in the past ten years is about +10F.

A friend who grew up in western Montana remembers delivering newspapers, on foot, in temperatures as low as -60F. Brrr!