In Hawaii in November and the temp plummeted to 70ºF and all the locals busted out their sweatshirts and jackets. Meanwhile us tourists are fine in shorts and T-shirts. I still maintain that the coldest I’ve ever been is sailing on San Francisco Bay at night on the 4th of July, which makes me feel kinda like a wuss when I read this thread.
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but the skiing went a bit higgedly-piggedly
higgledy-piggledy?
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Chisinau, Moldova during the New Year’s gas embargo of 2005…or…Marfa, TX camping overnight at the Tumble Inn in December. When I woke up, I touched my bottle of Coke and it froze/iced over immediately.
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The number of coats and scarves raises another issue. If I’m wearing one item of clothing that’s difficult to remove, waiting until the last minute to go to the bathroom is a bad idea. Seeing how many layers Dayana put on, I’d have to start predicting that. 
Well, it’s gonna take me 20 minutes to deal with this outfit, times two, carry the coats and scarves, wearing mittens so…
Nope, I can’t go out for a drink.
My father told me something like this happened to the cup of coffee he thought would help keep him warm while stationed in Ramstein one winter. 
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what happens to contact lenses at those temps? they mention that no one wears glasses due to the metal freezing on the skin…
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I think you have to put them in once you’re back indoors - and hope your vision is good enough to navigate without them outside!
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You can put down your issues when you get to school.
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Me, a Californian: “Oh no, it’s 45 degrees outside this evening! How shall I survive being outside for 10 minutes?”
Much higher temperatures than the ones discussed in the video would kill me. Literally, I’m pretty sure.
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They work okay. Your eyes keep them at a nice 96 a 98.6F. The biggest issue is drying out if you don’t blink enough (which is a real possibility when it is insanely cold).
When I was in Peace Corps, they had a policy that contacts were not allowed. They wouldn’t support them, and could even terminate a volunteer who wore contacts. It was a reasonable policy: contact lenses required a level of sterility not usually accessible in most “traditional” peace corps countries, and eye infections are no joke.
Then a bunch of us were sent to the North (initially the North was closed off due to the military presence in the border regions, later once Kazakhstan and Russia sorted out their troops and equipment volunteers could go up north). Our glasses froze to our faces, the lenses fogged up for very long times (15+ minutes) when we went inside places such as shops. Peace Corps relented on their contact policy quickly after that.
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My favorite quote from an Alaskan Coast Guard flag officer I was meeting with several years ago: “Jet fuel freezes at -47 C, greatly impacting the enjoyment of the flight.”
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I just learned: Pure anti-freeze has a freezing point much higher than an anti-freeze/water mixture.
Pure ethylene glycol has a freezing point of about 10 °F, but a 70/30 mixture anti-freeze/water has a freezing point of -67 °F. Anything more (or less) than 70/30 and the freezing point starts to rise, not fall.
So, all these Yakutsk cars have to be in (somewhat) heated garages, or their engine blocks freeze solid.
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Our outdoor spirit thermometer showed 32F (first that we’ve seen) a few days ago. About 4:30AM in the back patio in Santa Clarita. Lowest we’ve seen in SoCal except for the 2F we measured near EAFB a few years ago. The desert can get cold, baby.
From a long ago travel article: An apparently “inexperienced” tour guide decided to give his tour group an interesting experience: Drinking a shot of vodka outside in the Siberian Winter. Demonstrating how it’s done (as if imbibing vodka is especially unusual), he downed a shot — then keeled over dead. Must have been an especially cold day.
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I know what I’d wear! A path to the closest place with a south bound destination.
Basic training at Ft Leonard Wood Missouri January of 1967 we had a 17-mile hike in freezing rain, then bivouacked by finding a partner with a second half of a 2-piece tent. We each got only a half tent and a grungy sleeping bag. Temps below zero, two-hour guard duty at some point in the night. One poor kid couldn’t find a tent partner and froze to death. By morning when the drunken drill sergeants staggered out of their RV’s they realized they had fucked up a bit. I was in the over 50% group hauled out to the base hospital with pneumonia. The remaining guys were allowed to ride back in deuce and a half’s. The company was a week behind graduation schedule. At the "graduation ceremony we told we were the sorriest lot of scum to ever go through training. The drill sergeant were all pissed because of the disciplinary crap that fell on their sorry asses. Letting a 17-year-old enrollee kid freeze to death looked bad on their record. That was the first time I heard about the concept of Fragging. Rolling a grenade in an assholes tent once you got to the jungle. I stayed stateside for riot duty after MLK and RFK were assassinated and got the first major piece of my education in reality 101.
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Clicked on a suggested video that popped up and it’s pretty shocking.
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Technically, the coldest place I’ve been was Helsinki in December – I think it was only -15 or -20°C – but the coldest I’ve felt has been in much warmer climates.
The thing is, in winter at high latitudes, you know the cold is going to be an issue, so you won’t even open the door unless you’re wearing thermal underwear, gloves etc. And everything’s set up for it down to the smallest detail (I enjoyed how all the Finnish dogs wore little shoes). Plus, when it gets cold enough it’s very dry, and even city snow is just like walking on sand.
But if it snows in London, everyone becomes incompetent at life, and you can forget (or not have) appropriate clothing, and find yourself trudging through miserable slush in inappropriate footwear, so that 1°C feels more unpleasant than -20.
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We had 35 deg the other day, and it had me contemplating a move to the equator…
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“take your glasses of and they tear off chunks of your cheek”
YIKES!
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I’ve climbed waterfall ice in -35C/-30F temps. The ice gets very brittle and fragments like broken chandeliers. Hanging there, slowly getting colder is a great time to reassess your life choices.
But then it’s your turn to start moving, start swinging, and everything is right again.
In case you are wondering - layers are indeed key, with down jacket inside goretex. There are special boots and gloves needed - slimmer versions of those seen on 8000m peaks.
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Sivera, which is a Russian brand. This specific parka looks like it could be either the Баенка М or Баенка МС.
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