![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
Living in the deep freeze
It was -30F according to the outside weather station and -35F on the official (airport) weather when I got up this morning (-35/-37C respectively). It's been so pleasant to be warmer this past week, about 15F/-9C and lightly snowing, which I realize isn't warm by most people's standards but I just find that weather so refreshing and pleasant. It's just so much easier. You don't have to plan everything in advance, you can just get in the car and go places, you don't have to worry about tucking in your groceries so lettuce doesn't freeze on the trip to the car, you don't even have to zip up your coat or cover your ears just for walking from a car to a building. Then it gets cold like this again and everything is couched around with careful planning, no unnecessary travel, having to plug in the car's block heater for hours ahead of time before it'll start ...
But there's also something fascinating and neat to me about the physical changes in the world when it's this cold. Everything sounds different, because the air is so much denser; sounds are sharper, and carry farther, so car noises from a mile away sound like they're right in the yard. (If you think about it, -35F is almost 70 degrees colder than freezing, and 100+ degrees colder than room temperature.)
This is the kind of cold in which boiling water, thrown in the air, turns instantly to a cloud of frozen mist. I filmed this for Youtube a number of years ago; the "pop!" is the water converting to steam, and the video also captures the odd squeaky-crunchy sound of walking around outside when the snow is this cold. (See also the cutting room floor outtake version in which the handle came off the mug.) I demonstrated this phenomenon once many years ago for a coworker who was new to Alaska, and it made an incredibly satisfying, tremendously loud CRACK! that startled me so much - it's not usually that loud - that I thought at first the cup I was using to throw the water had exploded.
Cars have block and battery heaters, operated by a little plug dangling from under the hood. (When I first moved to Fairbanks in the 90s, I used to wonder what the plugs were for, until my first winter ...) Down to about 0 to -10F is about how cold it can be, usually, before the battery will cease to crank without an hour or two of plugging in first, which really makes you think twice about unnecessary trips. Back when I was working an office job, in the really serious cold, -50 and colder, we would go out on our lunch break and start our cars for a while on our lunch break even though they were plugged in, just to make sure they would start at quitting time after 8+ hours of not being driven.
As much as I know that the Arctic warming has all kinds of negative knock-on effects, it's hard to truly muster up a lot of mourning for the weeks-long -50 cold spells we used to have in December and January. Like, okay, yes, local ecosystem, FINE, I do get it. The severe cold is a barrier to many species moving north, like spruce bark beetles and ticks and snakes and other things I'm glad not to have here.
But it's just so incredibly hard to live through. Everything starts to break at -50. Fan belts snap like twigs. Tires freeze flat and go CLUNKCLUNKCLUNK until they warm up enough to be round again. One winter back in the 90s I accidentally rolled my car into a wooden parking barricade during a cold snap and the plastic bumper - which, to be fair, had been through an earlier fender-bender already - fell apart like an eggshell. Propane liquifies below -40, so gas stoves don't work right. (Our propane tank is outside but insulated, so I've rarely had it do anything weirder than having the flame get kind of guttery and yellow; still, it's annoying not to be able to trust that the stove will turn on because Physics Says No.) Diesel engines stop working because diesel turns to sludge. And so forth. Severe cold is hard for humans to live in.
But it's not that cold for us right now, and not supposed to be. It might dip to -40 briefly in the next few days, but it'll warm up after that. And we're already past the darkest point of the winter, the sun will be shining on our house soon (currently blocked by a hill), and things will be getting warmer again.
But there's also something fascinating and neat to me about the physical changes in the world when it's this cold. Everything sounds different, because the air is so much denser; sounds are sharper, and carry farther, so car noises from a mile away sound like they're right in the yard. (If you think about it, -35F is almost 70 degrees colder than freezing, and 100+ degrees colder than room temperature.)
This is the kind of cold in which boiling water, thrown in the air, turns instantly to a cloud of frozen mist. I filmed this for Youtube a number of years ago; the "pop!" is the water converting to steam, and the video also captures the odd squeaky-crunchy sound of walking around outside when the snow is this cold. (See also the cutting room floor outtake version in which the handle came off the mug.) I demonstrated this phenomenon once many years ago for a coworker who was new to Alaska, and it made an incredibly satisfying, tremendously loud CRACK! that startled me so much - it's not usually that loud - that I thought at first the cup I was using to throw the water had exploded.
Cars have block and battery heaters, operated by a little plug dangling from under the hood. (When I first moved to Fairbanks in the 90s, I used to wonder what the plugs were for, until my first winter ...) Down to about 0 to -10F is about how cold it can be, usually, before the battery will cease to crank without an hour or two of plugging in first, which really makes you think twice about unnecessary trips. Back when I was working an office job, in the really serious cold, -50 and colder, we would go out on our lunch break and start our cars for a while on our lunch break even though they were plugged in, just to make sure they would start at quitting time after 8+ hours of not being driven.
As much as I know that the Arctic warming has all kinds of negative knock-on effects, it's hard to truly muster up a lot of mourning for the weeks-long -50 cold spells we used to have in December and January. Like, okay, yes, local ecosystem, FINE, I do get it. The severe cold is a barrier to many species moving north, like spruce bark beetles and ticks and snakes and other things I'm glad not to have here.
But it's just so incredibly hard to live through. Everything starts to break at -50. Fan belts snap like twigs. Tires freeze flat and go CLUNKCLUNKCLUNK until they warm up enough to be round again. One winter back in the 90s I accidentally rolled my car into a wooden parking barricade during a cold snap and the plastic bumper - which, to be fair, had been through an earlier fender-bender already - fell apart like an eggshell. Propane liquifies below -40, so gas stoves don't work right. (Our propane tank is outside but insulated, so I've rarely had it do anything weirder than having the flame get kind of guttery and yellow; still, it's annoying not to be able to trust that the stove will turn on because Physics Says No.) Diesel engines stop working because diesel turns to sludge. And so forth. Severe cold is hard for humans to live in.
But it's not that cold for us right now, and not supposed to be. It might dip to -40 briefly in the next few days, but it'll warm up after that. And we're already past the darkest point of the winter, the sun will be shining on our house soon (currently blocked by a hill), and things will be getting warmer again.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
Wow, that video is impressive.
The coldest I’ve ever experienced here was about -10C in the very cold winter of 2010/11. I work in commercial property and one of the novel problems we hit was that road salt/grit doesn’t work under about -5C and that was a completely new thing for us. Which is pretty trivial compared to what you’re describing!
I have a question - how do you stop water pipes freezing all the time in that kind of weather? Just really, really, really good insulation?
no subject
A lot of it is to do with how houses are designed. If possible, pipes are never placed in a position where they would be exposed to the air - they're either inside walls (which are well insulated here, always) or in a heated or well-insulated crawlspace under the house, or underground. (Our pipes are under the house in a crawlspace that is both heated and insulated. I'm not sure if you'd call it something different or even have an equivalent - basically the house floor is up off the ground but the foundation goes about another meter down, so there's an enclosed and warm space underneath the floor.)
When it's impossible to avoid exposing them to cold, yeah, they're insulated or else they're heat-taped - this is an electrical cable that becomes warm, like a very mild version of the heating element in a water heater, which is wrapped around the pipe.
Pipes do still occasionally freeze, especially in buildings left unattended. But it's a good questions! And the different construction is part of why mild cold is much more destructive in places that don't normally get this cold, since the houses aren't built with that in mind, but here it's taken into account in the design.
Oh, and yeah, we are too cold for road salt! In recent years they've started using it a little when it's warmer, but mostly road maintenance in the winter uses gravel or a tractioning device which grooves the ice on the roads so that there's a traction surface on the ice when it's too thick to remove.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
This is the bit that got to me. It makes sense when you think about it! AND YET.
no subject
no subject
And yes, I would be very happy to answer questions; hit me up anytime! I don't know if you have my email but it's layla.in.alaska at gmail, or sholio on Discord.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
*turns on space heater in the 57 degree weather* LOL
no subject
no subject
no subject
And seconding above - that video is awesome, thank you for sharing!
no subject
Also this is all really neat to read about and you should definitely continue to incorporate these incredible tidbits into fic :D (Biggles fic XD )
no subject
Right?? Such a mood.
no subject
Tyres freezing flat is scary! Lettuce freezing on the way to the car is scary! I think -5C is the coldest weather I've ever been in and that wasn't even in Australia.
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
no subject
That makes thermodynamic sense.
Thanks for the videos!
no subject
no subject
no subject
It really is amazing how varied cold weather is. Objectively I don't live in a place that gets horrendously cold, although it's more than cold enough for my taste, but when my Ginny moved here from Toronto (which gets colder than it does here, although still nothing like the prairies) it took her a couple of years to feel less like the damp cold was getting right into her bones.
no subject
brrrrrr
Sounds so cold there.
no subject
no subject
It's incredible to me that people lived in Alaska hundreds, let alone thousands, of years ago - it seems so hard now. I'm actually reading a a very spooky horror book about a polar expedition right now and the main antagonist so far is the wind.