Comments on: Now that's cold.

Now that's cold.

three blind mice — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:08:43 -0800

The coldest place in North America. Snag, Yukon Territory, Canada. Wilfred "Wilf" Blezard remembers the coldest recorded day in North America's history. Now 82 years old, Blezard was one of four weathermen stationed at the Snag airport in Yukon, Canada, on February 3, 1947. On that day, the temperature dropped to 81 degrees below zero Fahrenheit (-60C).

By: blue_beetle

blue_beetle — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:23:21 -0800

Bah, in Edmonton we'ld hit -40C (-40F) all the time. I'll be impressed when helium starts pooling.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:24:59 -0800

If you prefer, here's the Google satelite image.

By: DeepFriedTwinkies

DeepFriedTwinkies — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:27:31 -0800

I remember once when I had to walk to school barefoot, backwards so it'd be uphill, in a tutu. It was -143 and the air molecules froze so we had to dodge frozen oyxgen and hydrogen and we couldn't even see because we had to walk backwards then when we got to school the only thing they had to keep us warm was pictures of Ann Coulter in a tank top. Plus we had to eat cilantro ice cream. THAT was a cold day-now I think I'll go read the links and see if any of this is relevant to the discussion.

By: ursus_comiter

ursus_comiter — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:28:24 -0800

Man, I miss winter.

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:36:40 -0800

I've had to walk to work eight blocks in a -20ish F wind chill...by the time it warmed up to the mid-twenties by the weekend, I was boppin' around in jeans and a sweatshirt.

By: sixdifferentways

sixdifferentways — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:40:03 -0800

That's interesting DeepFriedTwinkies . . . I would have thought Ann Coulter's lady business was the coldest place in North America.

By: Gamblor

Gamblor — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:40:36 -0800

-81F? That's a real weenie shrinker.

By: bonehead

bonehead — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:41:19 -0800

My dad used to be a Chem prof at the University of Alberta (in Edmonton). They used to do vacuum-line synthesis on the roof in winter time because they saved so much money on liquid nitrogen (which apparently cost a lot more then). I have many not-so fond memories of driving around town with wheels that had frozen flat overnight. Ka-thunk, ka-thunk. It was like going over speedbumps for the halfhour it took for the rubber tires to thaw.

By: Gamblor

Gamblor — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:41:51 -0800

So is the thought of Ann Coulter, now that you mention it.

By: kimota

kimota — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:45:55 -0800

That'd be the naturally coldest place in North America; the artificially coldest place in the world is in Florida.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 12:53:18 -0800

Bah! I had to bring a pickaxe to school to carve a path through the solidiified atmosphere. The pick had to be superchilled to avoid an explosive reaction between the metal and the absolute zero temperature of the air. The bullies at school would shove your ass out the window and then crack it with a hammer to shatter it. I would toss water in the air and it would dissolve because the molecules couldn't maintain cohesion. We used to have Bose-Einstein condensate-ball fights. We couldn't use lead pencils in our school because lower than 7.2 K they became superconductive and the resulting lightning would zap the pencils right out of our hands. Cold? Bah. Kids today. "the magnification of local sounds created by the severe temperature inversion" is funky tho. I like the picture of his beard.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:08:47 -0800

I thought the coldest place in North America was the summit of Mount Washington? Oops, sorry, it was just a state record but they do hold the dubious title of World's Worst Weather (highest wind speed: 231 mph just think about that windchill!).

By: rolypolyman

rolypolyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:29:12 -0800

When I was going through the area up there in 1999 we actually tried to drive to Snag. It's about 10 miles off the Alaskan Highway and is supposedly long-abandoned. The best I could figure from my aeronautical charts I happened to have was that a dirt road led from a little roadside park northeastward. We gave it a try and went about a quarter mile through a spruce forest before the dirt road become curved and rutted. Since I was driving a Honda sedan I figured that was a really, really bad place to break down and we turned around.

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 13:30:39 -0800

When I lived in Maine, we had a few nights where you could spit and it would hit the ground solid, around -40 as I recall. However, pee didn't do that, much to our disappointment. I can't really imagine -81. That might as well be space cold as far as I'm concerned. Even -40 is effing goshdarned cold, people. Especially when you don't have indoor plumbing. No, don't ask.

By: dobie

dobie — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 14:04:22 -0800

My mom tells me a story of being woken up for school by my grandma when she was a little girl, with the words "The fellow on the radio said that with the wind chill, the -40(C) feels just like it would at -100". I don't know if that's even possible but to this day I have a strong aversion to flat, wind ravaged provinces (or territories).

By: HTuttle

HTuttle — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 14:39:21 -0800

What? No Hillary jokes?

By: septentrion

septentrion — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 15:17:00 -0800

Yeah here on Svalbard I have experienced ambient -40F/C with wind bringing the effective (wind chill) down to over -100F. Don't know what that is in Celcius (I'm American). Man I miss Fairbanks sometimes, even without indoor plumbing. Mt. Washington claims to be the _windiest_ place on Earth. Never been there.

By: rhapsodie

rhapsodie — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 15:30:49 -0800

Here in Fairbanks we had a week between -40&degF and -50°F just a week ago, but thankfully we rarely ever have any windchill; coldest I've experienced is -56°F. Best temperatures for a dip in the hot springs, though.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 15:45:53 -0800

Blezard? That's one eponysterical weatherman.

By: Smedleyman

Smedleyman — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 16:19:21 -0800

Heh heh....cold and windy....Hillary....heh heh.

By: smcniven

smcniven — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 19:16:15 -0800

Bonehead: Any idea what the black out rectangle to the south of your google map reference is?

By: bonehead

bonehead — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 09:34:23 -0800

No idea. I wondered that too. It's pretty big, 35km long, 6 or seven wide. Plenty of space for an airport. Maybe Snag wasn't abandonned in '76 after all.

By: PurplePorpoise

PurplePorpoise — Fri, 03 Feb 2006 11:55:28 -0800

Whoah - that monolith is pretty freaky. Artifact?

By: Dunwitty

Dunwitty — Sat, 04 Feb 2006 05:38:52 -0800

ah, rhapsodie... greenhorn! My first year in Fairbanks (actually, Ft. Wainright that year), it hit -71. Of the 17 winters I spent there, there were at least 8 that went to 60 below. Hard on cars. We had a Volkswagon bus that was aircooled. You couldn't use a plug heater on it, my dad had to put a pan of charcoal below the oilpan to try and re-liquefy it.