55 Below Zero
My friend Brent teaches school up in northern Minnesota — up around Tower and Soudan and Babbitt. They’re having a touch of nippy weather these past few days. In discussing whether they might be closing the schools, he casually informed me:
“there is talk of -50 wind chills- our district automatically closes school at -55 ( we are tough) so… maybe no school or a late start tomorrow, but not getting my hopes up.”
I wonder how well young Dave Kori and his classmates here in Fairfax County would do with that kind of weather?
As it turns out, they did cancel school up north — but it was as much because of the ice on the roads as it was because of the temperature. They had a day or two of unusually warm weather and then the temperature dropped fairly dramatically, creating unusually icy conditions.
Fiftyfive. Degrees. Below. Zero.
Bwahaha! I love it! Bring it on!!
Of course, the key to being happy in that kind of weather is wearing the right kind of clothes. In my experience, one of the biggest problems people have with cold weather is that they just don’t dress appropriately for it. They wear thin leather boots. You need heavy insulated shit-kickers. They wear absurd leather gloves. Only thick mittens will work when it’s this cold. And no hats!! What the hell are people thinking? You need a thick hat and scarves that cover most of your face when it’s that cold. Actually, you need all that stuff even when it’s relatively warm. Say… 20 below zero.
for those of you who might be interested- it is noon and the weather has warmed up considerably- to minus 17. we do have a 10 mile an hour wind, and apparently, that gives us a wind chill of minus 42. of course, since school was canceled for the entire day, we are out enjoying the weather. (we DO tend to dress appropriately for the weather up here- carharts and sorels are high fashion, and suitble for formal functions. if you are an upscale type, you will be found in wintergreen jackets and stieger mukluks.) in any case, i shake my head in sorrow at how soft we have become! in MY day…
My God…..
And you want your husband to go live and Duluth?
What kills me is not so much the cold as humidity. I’ve have had a dry -20 Celsius (I guess that’s -4F, pretty cold for Western Europe) in Slovakia and it did not feel as bad as a wet -4C (25F) in Belgium. While I understand you can do some smart things to prevent the cold to get to your bones, I wonder if you can do the same with humidity. It seems to permeate everything.
Alright, “Frozen Fear”. I know exactly who you are! I see that you’re posting from an IP in Japan!!
(For the rest of you: My husband’s in Kyoto presenting a paper at the university there.)
Anyway, Bernie, I agree with you. A dry cold is much more tolerable than a damp cold. When it’s wet, the cold seems to permeate your entire body in a most unpleasant way! That is one very good thing about the cold in northern Minnesota. It’s generally dry.