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I need a good winter icon ...
We've set record lows now for two days in a row. Apparently it was -41 at the airport this morning. (... that's roughly the same in Celcius and Fahrenheit. WOE.) It's a teensy bit warmer at our place; I'm fairly sure it's been hovering around -35 all day. (That's not what the thermometer in the window says, but it's extremely inaccurate at low temperatures, and Le Husband said that the car thermometer read -33 in our yard when he came home tonight.)
(Fun fact: As of my typing this, Fairbanks is #15 of the coldest places IN THE WORLD. And most of the weather stations above us are in Antarctica or Siberia.)
Interesting things that happen at -35:
- Toss a cup of near-boiling water in the air and it instantly vaporizes in a huge puff of steam. I can NEVER resist doing this, every winter. Actually, it gets even more interesting when it's colder. I once demonstrated this at -50 for a co-worker from Texas who was experiencing her first Alaska winter, and it exploded, with such a loud crack that I though at first it had broken the cup. Very gratifying.
- Sounds carry forever. We're a half-mile from the highway, and you can barely hear the traffic in the summer, but at -35 the air is so still and dense that it sounds like cars are driving right into the yard.
- Frozen meat from the outdoor freezer is so cold that I have to unwrap it under warm running water to prevent my bare hands from freezing to it. (Ow.)
- On a rather more prosaic note, when I come in from outside, my glasses are so cold that they not only fog up instantly, but it instantly freezes to ice, even in a 65-degree house. Also, when you're outside more than a few minutes, your nose hairs start to freeze. It's a very odd sensation.
- On an even more prosaic note, one of the dogs has decided to go on bathroom strike. Every time I try to coax her outside, she flees to her bed, where she trembles and huddles and looks at me like I'm the biggest meanie that ever meaned. After an unbelievable 24 hours of this, I got worried enough to pick her up and carry all 55 lbs of her -- shivering and struggling -- down the stairs and out the door ... where she did her business in record time and scurried back in. Wimp.
- One final, random cold-weather factoid: a few winters ago, I discovered that at -40, diesel won't burn. Like, at all. I was trying to use diesel to start a fire in the outdoor boiler, and at -40, you can throw all the matches you like at it -- nothing happens. Soaking wood in diesel just makes it wet and even less likely to catch on fire.
I CAN HAZ SPRING NAO?
(Fun fact: As of my typing this, Fairbanks is #15 of the coldest places IN THE WORLD. And most of the weather stations above us are in Antarctica or Siberia.)
Interesting things that happen at -35:
- Toss a cup of near-boiling water in the air and it instantly vaporizes in a huge puff of steam. I can NEVER resist doing this, every winter. Actually, it gets even more interesting when it's colder. I once demonstrated this at -50 for a co-worker from Texas who was experiencing her first Alaska winter, and it exploded, with such a loud crack that I though at first it had broken the cup. Very gratifying.
- Sounds carry forever. We're a half-mile from the highway, and you can barely hear the traffic in the summer, but at -35 the air is so still and dense that it sounds like cars are driving right into the yard.
- Frozen meat from the outdoor freezer is so cold that I have to unwrap it under warm running water to prevent my bare hands from freezing to it. (Ow.)
- On a rather more prosaic note, when I come in from outside, my glasses are so cold that they not only fog up instantly, but it instantly freezes to ice, even in a 65-degree house. Also, when you're outside more than a few minutes, your nose hairs start to freeze. It's a very odd sensation.
- On an even more prosaic note, one of the dogs has decided to go on bathroom strike. Every time I try to coax her outside, she flees to her bed, where she trembles and huddles and looks at me like I'm the biggest meanie that ever meaned. After an unbelievable 24 hours of this, I got worried enough to pick her up and carry all 55 lbs of her -- shivering and struggling -- down the stairs and out the door ... where she did her business in record time and scurried back in. Wimp.
- One final, random cold-weather factoid: a few winters ago, I discovered that at -40, diesel won't burn. Like, at all. I was trying to use diesel to start a fire in the outdoor boiler, and at -40, you can throw all the matches you like at it -- nothing happens. Soaking wood in diesel just makes it wet and even less likely to catch on fire.
I CAN HAZ SPRING NAO?
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