GIVEAWAY! CONTEST!! "Just how cold was it?"

[Captain Pre-Capsize]

Tell us your story...

It is winter so why not see just how cold it was one time for YOU? When was the time it was the coldest you have ever been.

Two winners will be selected by random.org and each winner will have $50.00 to spend in our store right here.

This is CONUS only please. Good luck to each one of you and we all look forward to hearing about your experience!

~ The Captain

 

[kaufdrop27]

Boy Scouts it wasn’t terribly cold by itself, probably upper 30s, but it was also pouring rain. I didn’t have any fancy gear and there was about 2 inches of water running through the tent all night. It was a freezing, wet and sleepless night. It was raining so bad they called all the parents to come get us early.

 

[Kix]

The coldest for me was three days in NW Montana, 3 miles south of Canada. This was a remote area with a couple of houses about 1/2 mile apart.

It was -40*F. A neighbor asked me to keep their house warm. That would be no big deal, but we all heated with wood only, the area had no electricity. So every couple of hours I would WALK 1/2 mile to the neighbor's house (and back) and put wood in the wood stove. Vehicles would not start at -40*, so that wasn't an option. It's hard to convey how cold -40*F really is. Trust me, it's cold.

When the neighbors returned home, the LOTH called, very irritated, that inside her house was "cold" at 55*F. She just couldn't understand how hard it is to heat a house to 95*F above ambient temperature, especially when I had to keep my own house warm, so I couldn't stay at her house around the clock.

I have since moved to a warmer climate, and have no desire to experience -40*F again!

 

[mx482]

Two years ago it got down to -22 (Kansas). Somebody told me you could take a pan of water and throw it in the air (the water of course) and it would freeze in the air. Of course I had to try it. The water came down in a shower of frozen dust.

 

[Ckmaui]

In

quick back story my best friend in the islands we lived a few units from each other (condo) but both had a view onto the hot tubs and water and we would always meet up hang out after work
so this girl in the hot tub I go down start talking to her and think MAN you have to meet my friend Paul ! You guys would so get along so later I tell Paul HEY you have to meet this girl from Canada I met and they do get along
well ironic enough soon after my buddy Paul says to me dude I met this girl you guys have to meet and I say was it Karen from Canada and he says YEAH I laughed and said I met her today
so kinda funny to Maui boys met two Canadian girls and both of us thought they were spot on for the other ! And fast forward the two Maui boys married those Canadian girls over 25 yrs ago now !

So how does this relate to Cold well Paul moved to Edmonton Canada ! And they had their wedding in January !
So I fly out from Maui to Edmonton in JAN ! And yeah never been to a place so called it hurts when you breathe in and of course coming straight from the islands where I am freezing at 60 think it was like -30 or something then ?

STUPID time
so wearing surf shorts most my life I am not used to pockets or maybe the one small side one so I tend to hold things in my teeth when doing something and sure enough I go out to unlock the car at the wedding and stick the key in my teeth to hold it and !!!!! Instant lock once my lips hit the key since the key was out in the open long enough hahaahaha and did think of that scene funny enough you posted a pic to ! and so did the others when I told them what I did !
I knew enough to think OH NO and cupped my hands and started breathing out to warm it up but OH MAN that was a brutal transition for me !

 

[Darth Scandalous]

Not in, but I'll share this story.

Grew up on the plains of South Dakota and over Christmas break my dad and I would often go rabbit hunting (we raised snakes so we would stock the freezer with small game to feed them). The best days where when it was well below zero because the bunnies would sit out and sun themselves and they wouldn't move for anything, so you could get real close.

Well, this day it wasn't sunny but it was cold. High was in the -30s F and the wind was howling so the windchill factor was in the -70s. The radio was advising no travel but it was the last weekend of break so we decided to give it a shot anyway. We went to a farmer's place who we knew, and he assured us that there were plenty of bunnies in the grove but he thought we were crazy. (We were). I had an old single shot over-and-under .22/.410 because the semi-auto my grandpa gave me wouldn't operate in that cold. We were using .22 so as to not have lead shot in the meat. For gloves I had a pair of heavy "choppers": leather fur lined mittens. Under those I had a pair of thick jersey gloves with another pair of light thermal gloves under that (as I recall they had little pieces of aluminum woven into the fabric, and they really worked). And of course long underwear and multiple layers on top of that.

We started walking the grove and despite it being grey and windy there were, as advertised, lots of bunnies. I'd have to slide the mitten off my right hand to **** and fire the rifle, then try to grab another cartridge out of my coat pocket and reload without dropping it. I did drop a few, though. I think we got about 20 by the time we got to the end of the grove and honestly it was cold but not that bad.

Then we headed back down the windward side. Again, wind must have been in 40mph range. NOW it was cold. I would hold one mittened hand on the side of my face to block the wind and the other in my pocket, with the rifle in the crook of my arm, and then switch, because even with the gloves on, my hands were starting to get numb, and my face was completely numb. Still managed to get off a few shots which was even worse since I had to take the mitten off.

But then things took another turn. You know how when you're really cold, you all of a sudden need to pee? And how when you need to pee, you can't stay warm no matter what? Yeah. Well, we were still a quarter mile from the truck so I decided to give it a go. Leaned the rifle up against the fence, took my mittens off...could not for the life of me unzip my fly because my fingers were basically stiff and the gloves weren't helping. I'm dancing at this point and wondering how long it will take to freeze if I just go in my pants. So I took ALL the gloves off. Got the fly unzipped, fought my way through multiple layers, relieved myself...and let me tell you, it wasn't just my fingers that were cold by the time I was done! I tried zipping up my fly but that was a lost cause because my fingers literally wouldn't do anything. So I walked the rest of the way back with my fly open which, even with long underwear on, was a bit...drafty.

By this time we were basically at the bag limit between the two of us (which was something ridiculously high, maybe 15 or 20 per person) so we decided to just hoof it back to the truck as fast as we could. Got in, blasted the heat, and headed home. I wound up with a tiny spot of frostbite on my cheekbone (which healed up just fine) and everything else thawed out satisfactorily.

To this day, whenever I call my dad and he starts talking about cold weather (as I'm sure he will this week since it's below zero again) I always say, "yeah, but remember that day we went rabbit hunting?" And he'll laugh and say, "yeah, it's cold today, but it's not THAT cold!"

 

[FarmerTan]

Michigan is really moderate when it comes to temperatures, as compared to Wisconsin, the Dakotas, etc. But one Christmas season I was judging trees decorated for the main street in town by those pesky Boy Scouts (shout out to @kaufdrop27 ) that should have been in a flooded tent somewhere. And it was cold with a capital "K" let me tell you.

I THOUGHT I was dressed for the elements, but one of my co-judges just happened to be Santa Klaus, and he had obviously had too much eggnog or something, and became a regular chatty Kathy. He liked to kill me. I thought my toes would break off if I didn't walk on my heels.

We finally finished judging and conversating with Boy Scouts and went into the Local Bakery to have donuts and coffee, like a regular @OkieStubble , when all of a sudden I went into AFib! I couldn't tell if it was my frosted glasses or a sudden rush of blood to my frozen eyeballs, but I excused myself and went into the bathroom. Then my frozen toes thawed out and began to THROB! Then my body decided that some waste products had to be IMMEDIATELY evacuated and I was now regretting my many layers of clothing....

The AFib eventually went away (of course, or you folks wouldn't be blessed with this first hand account of my adventure in civic volunteerism that day) and I was able to forgive Santa in time for Christmas. The End.

 

[FarmerTan]

The coldest for me was three days in NW Montana, 3 miles south of Canada. This was a remote area with a couple of houses about 1/2 mile apart.

It was -40*F. A neighbor asked me to keep their house warm. That would be no big deal, but we all heated with wood only, the area had no electricity. So every couple of hours I would WALK 1/2 mile to the neighbor's house (and back) and put wood in the wood stove. Vehicles would not start at -40*, so that wasn't an option. It's hard to convey how cold -40*F really is. Trust me, it's cold.

When the neighbors returned home, the LOTH called, very irritated, that inside her house was "cold" at 55*F. She just couldn't understand how hard it is to heat a house to 95*F above ambient temperature, especially when I had to keep my own house warm, so I couldn't stay at her house around the clock.

I have since moved to a warmer climate, and have no desire to experience -40*F again!

I still heat with wood. You shoulda told her husband to see a lawyer doggone. Ingrate!

 

[AndyPanda]

Winter of '72-73 in Logan, Utah (college at USU) and it got down to -40F and stayed there for about a week. When you would walk outside, the first breath inhaled thru the nose would freeze all the little hairs in your nostrils and sinus. Strange and "crunchy" feeling!

 

[Big_T]

Thank you Captain for a chance at another awesome giveaway.

I grew up in sunny Florida EXCEPT for a couple of years when my Mom and Dad decided to move to the state of Maine. I remember a morning when I was in second grade waiting for the school bus bundled up with a hat, a coat with a hood tied around my face, mittens, and rubber boots with two pairs of socks. I'm standing at the end of the driveway and the snowbanks are at least twice as high as me, and I'm jumping around trying to stay warm.

A few years later I was playing in the Gulf of Mexico with my buddies on a regular basis and it was all but forgotten.

 

[slimshavy]

I was going to say the coldest I've been was just now when I went to pick up my daughter from school, but that's recency bias. I think I was probably much colder when I was in high school waiting for the bus at 6:20 on the harshest days of winter. Some days it came late or occasionally didn't come at all. I kind of shoved myself into the corner of the porch of the nearby house to shield from the wind. Brr.

 

[desertcat]

Going to college in rural Minnesota and spending several years as a competitive Nordic skiier, I had plenty of experiences with brutally cold weather. I came to enjoy it. Born and raised in the Intermountain West, I felt like Northern winters shared a great deal of similarity with the remote desert; both are environments that can be literally lethal if you enter them unprepared. Part of the novelty was experiencing familiar environments changed so drastically by the season--the same leisurely walk to class in autumn became a sprint in winter, the desperation to escape the cold and flood of relief when returning to indoors was singular.

I think the coldest experience I had was a race in Upper Peninsula of Michigan, in the depths of January or February. After a very long drive from Southern MN, we arrived at the course and unpacked our gear along with all the other teams. Air temperatures were hovering in the negative teens. The snow was distinctly "squeaky" when we walked across it, indicating that temperatures were so low, all residual moisture in the snow was crystalline, frozen. This squeak is a nightmare, a warning: we set about waxing our skis with the hardest, coldest-weather waxes we had available. At these temperatures, the primary impediment to sliding quickly across snow is friction, the mechanical grip of sharp ice crystals with no lubricating liquid water to smooth the transit of the ski overtop. The skis must be waxed to make their surface as hard and flat as possible, to reduce the drag caused by these microscopic daggers.
The morning of the race arrives. Skiers try to wear as many layers as possible, shedding them minutes before they begin racing. Volunteers running the staggered start cover each racer with a fleece blanket as we stand in line, waiting for our turn to enter the 10 kilometer course. I remember little about the earlier part of the race, but I distinctly recall an intimidating downhill--my fatigue, cold, and misjudgment align and I fall at a pretty high rate of speed. Dusting myself off, I realize that I've broken my binding on my ski--I'm not going to be able to finish this race. Sadly, because the start was staggered and I'm on a very remote part of the course, no coaches, organizers, or even racers are anywhere nearby. I walked nearly 2 miles through the woods, following the course and carrying my broken ski. Boots not being designed for that kind of trudging, I was chilled absolutely to the bone and took several hours to recover sensation in my extremities. I never fell out of love with winter, but I didn't ski competitively much following that experience.

More recently I moved to the West Coast and now anything around freezing feels miserable. Don't know how I persevered all those years in the North.

 

[OkieStubble]

We finally finished judging and conversating with Boy Scouts and went into the Local Bakery to have donuts and coffee, like a regular @OkieStubble

I retired from donuts and coffee….

Not in, but in February of 2007, myself and a young rookie I was training was traveling on one of our cities freeways, on the way to the part of our sector we were going to patrol.

It was pouring down rain for most of the day before; and was a few degrees below freezing outside. We were just fixing to exit from the freeway, when a vehicle, several car lengths in front of us started to slide sideways while going over an overpass, as overpasses are the first parts of the road to freeze. The vehicle slid off the freeway, down a grass embankment and plunged into a large spillway that was there for the drainage of rainwater that intersected several freeways that bound into different directions.

I had the rookie, slow our unit down and we slowly drove over the embankment ourselves down to the spillway where the vehicle went in. It really surprised me how fast that vehicle started filling up with water. By the time this rookie and I, got out of our unit, took off our duty belts, radio’s and ballistic vests, the vehicle’s engine was already submerged and the back of the vehicle was sticking straight up in the air. It was sinking a lot faster then I had seen in movies?

The driver was a mother with two children, both under the age of 10 buckled in the backseat. The mother was screaming and the kids were crying. Spillway probably was only 10 ft deep, but I don’t think they could swim and the fear of the situation and coldness of the water seemed to freeze the mother into making any decisions of how to get her kids out.

Anyhoo, we both swam out to the vehicle; Man! I thought my heart was gonna stop when I first jumped in that water! It was soooooo cold!

The rookie got the two kids out thru one of the back doors and I climbed into the backseat from the other side. The Momma had already unbuckled herself, but she wouldn’t climb over the front seat after asking her several times. It’s like she couldn’t hear or understand me because of panicking or the shock of the cold water; I don’t know, but the car was filling up with water and we only had maybe a foot and a half of breathing space left between our head and the roof of the car. I think I went into panic mode myself and finally just yanked her over the front seat into the backseat with me; and then yanked her out the back door.
We were just a few feet from swimming away from the vehicle when it sank.

This probably sounds a lot more dramatic then what it was, cuz it went pretty smoothly once they were out of the car. Fire showed up 15 minutes after it was over. We got the woman and kids out of their wet clothes and put our uniform jackets on them and put them in the backseat of our unit with the heater blowing on high. Neither me or the Rook, wanted to take our wet clothes off in front of a strange lady and her kids, so we just set up front, shivering our asses off until Medical showed up.

Probably, the coldest I’ve ever been.

 

[Sam Hanwich]

I was reading my great grandmother's journal and she told the story of her father (my great-great grandpa) getting caught in a blizzard in Idaho (late 1800's horse and sled) and luckily the horses knew the way home even though the road was pretty much obliterated by the storm. When the horses brought the sled home, my gr-gr grandpa was in bad shape but still alive (just barely after 24 hours in the blizzard). My gr-gr grandma had to cut his shoes and socks off to rub his feet with snow alternated with water gradually bringing him up to temp again - she had to thaw out his beard enough that she could feed him some warm milk and get him in a warm bed. He was so lucky to survive

 

[skibik]

Not in.

I live in NW Minnesota about 17 miles from ours friends to the north and we do get some cold winters. About 30 years ago I had a '91 Oldsmobile Calais. It was about this time of the year and as usual we get our coldest weather in January and this was no different except for instead of the usual -25F nights we had between -45F to close to -50F and highs barely reached -25F. Of course this isn't a good enough excuse to close the manufacturing operation I worked for so this meant driving 13 miles to work anyway. Well, the company has plug in outlets for engine block heaters but when I come out at the end of my shift my car would only click. Thinking someone had unplugged but still plugged in, thought maybe the breaker tripped for my section, nope, turned out my plug had split the wires and wasn't making contact. Even though I was dressed in snow bibs, heavy jacket and big gloves I could feel the cold getting through in less than 5 minutes at that temp. I worked second shift so the graveyard maintenance crew was out helping us whos cars wouldn't start. Mine had to be towed inside to the loading docks, the car was so cold I couldn't even budge the steering wheel the power steering oil was that cold. Once inside on the warm docks it turned instantly to frost inside and out. Put a fan on a stand to help blow warm air on the motor. Took close to two hours and was able to get the motor to turn over really slow, the first revolution I think it had to scrape all the frost off the 4 cylinders but it fired right up. Moved it outside and let it idle for another 20 minutes or more before I tried to take off. Even dressed warm in those temps I couldn't believe how easy it is to get a chill. We are now in that cold spell since Saturday and throughout this week but at least it is only getting down to -20F to -25F in the evenings but still below the donut for high though the week. But Saturday and beyond looks like we are back to normal.

 

[Tathlum]

Grew up in Maine, central Penobscot County. When winter came everything would freeze for what seemed like months. The lakes would freeze enough that we could drive vehicles on them. Good times!

 

[ylekot]

Respectfully NOT in as I have been the recipient of The Captain's generosity already, but I will share.

I live in New York but not THAT New York.
While they talk about having the longest snowless streak in 50 years it will be -21F here on Friday.
I am not complaining because when I was a kid it would go below 0F right about this time of year and stay there for 10+ days.
We used to call our relatives in Virginia and Iowa for the weekly chat and tell them how it warmed up to -16F.
The coldest I have ever personally dealt with was -47F with a -75F windchill. Idling diesel engines would freeze up and quit.
Did you know that -40 is -40 in both Celsius and Fahrenheit? I have seen it many times here.

 

[Captain Pre-Capsize]

Time to draw the two winners! Random.org has selected @Kix and @Ckmaui as our two winners - congrats!

If you are a winner just email PM The Captain here with what you have chosen or email from our site. He will get your winnings on the way pronto!

Thanks to all who entered!

 

[Eric_75]

Congrats! @Kix & @Ckmaui

 

[FarmerTan]

Excellent choices! Enjoy, and thank you friend @Captain Pre-Capsize !