What Is Your Lowest Temperature

what is your lowest experienced, outdoor, very cold temperature. over several hours or months.

 

Poppy, being from middle Alabama, ummmm, use to go hunting early in the morning so upper teens is about it. That would never last more than a week at the most. Snow is rare, every 3-4 years for maybe 6:"

 

I thought you would have started the ball rolling Pops...
For me its in Canberra ACT (Australian Capitol Territory - A piece of land carved out of New South Wales) - minus 12C (-10.4F apparently) with a wind sheer of I don't know...Canberra was chosen as Australia's seat of power BECAUSE it was cold as f..k.
At the time the numb nuts thought "white" people worked better in cold weather! Not realizing it can get up to 42C in the summer (108F) in Canberra.
Ive lived in Hobart Tasmania...pretty close to the Antarctic, but because Hobart sits next to the water the temp finds it hard to drop below zero.
I remember walking home in Canberra early one morning (about 2 in the morning) - I got within 100m of my house when my back locked up and I could only walk in tiny steps...I was scared for the first time because id heard stories of drunks walking home and falling asleep on someones front garden only to never wake up...frozen stiff! I didn't know what else might lock up so I was very pleased to stumble into my front door...
My question to you Pops, is whats the highest temp you've lived in? Mine? 46C (115F)

 

Luke, -35c happens. it's the wind that really takes the toll. - 25c with no wind is ok by me.
as a younger gentleman, I relished working in harsh conditions.
now, not so much.
lowest temp- unsure because of wind chill.
I've worked pre wiring homes in -37 outside. inside seemed colder.
had to hit the truck to warm up a few times.

 

That's just wrong...Why do people think places like that are ok to live in? The cold makes me depressed...stay indoors.
So whats your highest temp you've lived in?

 

cheers G
not a lot of peeps understand real cold. dont blame them, I'd like to not know as well.
mystery why anyone would want to move into cold. I'm looking to move out. need some more pesos.

 

highest temp-
a glorious 38c.
it's a dry heat.
was born in a heat wave.
we are semi arid. cactus all around, rattlesnakes.
love to sweat, man. out on deck currently getting me some honkey tan.

 

-23 F for me. The shock absorbers on my van were solid and the tires had a flat spot that thumped until they warmed up.

 

If you like to sweat...come to Darwin mate, in the wet. Hotter than a sauna...
Its currently winter down south at the moment, everyone shivering...whilst in Darwin this time of the year its the dry season...the humidity drops way down making the days perfect...not too hot or cold, you can spend all day outside in a pair of shorts...weather perfection.

 

That was in another place and time. Old Forge, NY. I am in a temperate rain forest now. Pretty much 4- 15C most of the year. A bit colder and very wet in winter, a little hotter and very dry in the summer. When I want to sweat, I seek a sauna. If it gets too hot the river behind the house never gets warmer than 10C and I'll wade.

 

moved back here because it is one of the most temperate regions.

 

like to sweat in dry heat.
as a prairie boy, high humidity is debilitating.
worked in Saskatchewan for a few days after heavy rain. then the prairie sun kicked in- almost melted.
even the mosquitoes wouldn't venture out.
it was only about 500 km away from home, but the climate was desert/jungle to me. must have been around 80% humidity.
thinking 2-3 weeks to acclimatise, I could do it.
-38 is bearable if no wind.
including wind chill, lowest would be around -50 to -60(?). Hurts to breathe sometimes.
frozen digits hurt when thawing out.
a little frostbite on end of nose, nothing serious though. still pretty.

caught the heat stroke a couple times. probably explains a lot about me.

 

The coldest temps I've ever been exposed to was -39F. It was when I was in the Army out in the field in Alaska. Not sure exactly where we were, somewhere on the training areas of Ft. Greely, Ak, the home of the US Army Northern Warfare Training Center (NWTC). Flew up there in a C-130 from Ft. Richardson (near Anchorage, Ak) and jumped from about 800 feet. Felt like hopping into a pool of ice water jumping from the plane like that. Bout passed out from the cold blast. Luckily I didn't land in the deep snowbanks out there. Landed on the runway. Yay me. My whole body felt like I got stung by a bazillion wasps. After landing, the bottom of my feets had the same feeling, and my ass felt like I got drop kicked by Godzilla. Not a good start for the day. It was in late January of 1979 during a training exercise called Jack Frost '79. Got to the point the orders went out to cease all maneuvers and "go admin", meaning to stay in the tents and out of the wind. Supposedly the wind chill factor got down to -70F. All I knew was it was just too dang cold. Now I understood what my daddy was telling me about when he was in Korea during the war, except nobody was shooting at us. We had an unusually high cold weather casualty count during that operation. Everyone was afraid of losing their nads taking a leak. Boogers froze the honkers shut. Had to keep crunching the nose with the fingers to breathe. One dude had some teeth shatter. Not sure how that happened, but it sounded painful. Another had his nose freeze solid. Turned completely white like the sneaux. Looked like Michael Jackson's nose. He got it thawed out before permanent damage was done. A couple a guys got severe frostbite where the sun where don't shine while trying to take a dump. Very embarrassing. But when you gotta go, you gotta go. One guy decided to crap in the tent when he was on watch (one guy had to stay awake in the tent while the yukon stove was running, we all took 1 hour watches) and got his ass severely whipped by the rest of the squad when discovered. We were in 10 man tents, heated by a gas fueled stove. Maybe if he would've crapped in his own helmet it wouldn't have been such a big deal. Either that or if would've thrown the poop out the tent door before getting relieved on watch. He was about the biggest idiot in the platoon so no telling what he was thinking. He got beat up a lot. After a few days of admin, we had to go back to playing Army again. Really didn't feel any warmer, but the wind wasn't blowing very much at all so maybe that's why the brass put us back to work. That was about the suckiest time I had in the Army. Come to think of it, it was that WAS the suckiest time I ever experienced in my life. And coming from Louisiana, that was like being on that Ice planet in the second Star Wars movie, Hoth I believe it was called. When I saw that movie scene, it took me back to that crap time in Alaska called Jack Frost '79.

The hottest temps I've ever been in was 108F. Was riding to Sturgis in '11 on my motorbike. That was pretty miserable too. Some people said "you were on a motorcycle, in the wind, how could that be hot?" And I said to them, "yer an idiot and it shows, imagine being in a sauna, under a sun lamp, with a hand held hair dryer, full on hot blasting yer face for several hours, how would that feel you frigging douche bag?" They said, "oh yeah, I see what you mean." I said "duh, shut the hell up and buy me a beer now".

 

The Bering Sea on the cutter Storis from 90 to 94. All the coldest periods are jumbled together into one montage of ice, wind, waves and darkness. The wind was relentless and the temps anywhere from twenty above to sixty below, Fahrenheit. We memorialized one winter patrol as the 50/50/50 patrol; fifty knot winds, fifty foot seas and fifty degrees below zero for almost the entire 30 day patrol. To be outside was like a crazy carnival ride in sea spray freezing until it felt like a sand blaster in the extreme cold before it hit you. We'd periodically have to go topside with malls and axes to break the ice off the decks and superstructure because if enough accumulated you'd turn turtle. We had an icebreaker hull, so even when the pack ice shifted down in mid or late winter we'd still be on a patrol, crashing steadily through edge of that mess. Inside the vessel it sounded like... well, it's hard to describe, but ice ripping along metal, LOUD, never letting up for weeks sometimes until fuel or another cutter relieving us allowed us to go back to port. The Coast Guard had to be on those fishing banks 24/7/365 (and still are) because sooner or later, some fishing boat will send a Mayday. And in all that, as part of our duties, we'd have to board the big factory processors out there (mostly Japanese owned) and check their product to make sure they weren't taking prohibited fish. To get there was to be lowered from the deck in a 16 foot RHI and brave those same temperatures and waves in that tiny skiff. I'll never forget those days. Summers in the Bering and Chukchi seas could be more beautiful than words can describe, but you always knew that winter was coming.

Heat? San Antonio, Texas in July or August. 110 or 112 degrees, 90% humidity and not a breath of wind. I live in southern Arizona now, and the hottest day of the summer is not even close to what south Texas throws at you. That old saw about Arizona "dry heat" is very real. South Texas is like being locked in a sauna by a crazy person.

.

 

Here in Wyoming, this last winter the lowest it got was about -20f. Have experienced -40 a few times. One time the thermometer said 70 on the inside and -41 on the outside. In two steps I experienced a 111 degree change in temperature! I agree with many of you that humidity makes extremes of temperature worse. However, in very cold temps the moisture in the air freezes and falls to earth, thus, it can actually snow on a clear cold morning without a cloud in the sky. I regularly hunt ducks in -25 weather. I can take extreme cold much better than extreme heat. The worst heat I ever had was when I was in the Army at Ft. Sill, OK. If I remember correctly, it got up to around 109 with very high humidity. For that day's training we were outside all day in our steel pots, heavy fatigues and wearing all sorts of gear. I think I went through about 5 gallon of water that day. Literal hell for me. Give me -20 on a clear day anytime!

 

Reading the title my first thought was that I'm pretty sure my temp measured something like 97.2 at one point may even have got down to the 96 range.

But with the clarification we got below -30 F here last winter that's as cold as I remember although when I was growing up in a little town north of Spokane it may have gotten as cold or colder. I wasn't paying all that much attention my first 6 years or so. In the cold spell this winter my son tried the "cup of boiling water trick". I.e. he threw it into the air and it froze before it hit the ground.