Bundle up, friends! This is going to be a cold one!
We’ve been in a bit of a deep freeze here for a few times over the past few weeks. For those not in the New England region, “deep freeze” (to me anyway) means anything solidly below zero degrees Fahrenheit. There have been a few mornings when I have started my car and the temperature on the dash says horrible things like -15F. I am not too bothered by the cold though, and I like watching “cold start” videos on youtube. This one of a man starting his 2005 Subaru Impreza WRX STI at -44C (-47F) in Yellowknife, NT, Canada is one of my favorites. That’s so cold that he cannot even engage the clutch with the transmission in neutral because the oil in the gearbox is too thick for the engine to turn it.
I guess you could say when it gets cold here, rather than imagining places that are warmer, I imagine places that are colder. The city of Yaktusk in eastern Russia is one of the coldest cities in the world. In January, the average high temperature is only -19F! The coldest temperatures outside of Antarctica occur in the nearby Yana River basin. Inside the city itself, the coldest temperature recorded was -83.9F. In the winter there is often constant fog enveloping the city caused by the cold air and exhaust from heating.
You don’t have to go all the way to Russia for extreme temperatures and conditions. The summit of nearby Mt. Washington has some of the worst weather on the entire planet including low temperatures and high winds. At one point, the summit held the world record for highest directly recorded surface wind speed of 231 mph recorded in 1934. If I want to feel a bit warmer, I visit their current summit conditions site. A few weeks ago, during a cold snap here, I happened to check it and thought it was broken. It was reading a standing temperature of around -15F and a steady 90 mph wind, which when combined made for quite the wind chill!
Even closer to home, Vermont holds the record for lowest temperature ever recorded in all of New England (yes, even beating out the coldest temperature recorded at the Mt. Washington summit). On December 30, 1933 in Bloomfield, VT a temperature of -50F was recorded. This record stood unchallenged until 2009 when it was tied by a temperature recorded along the Big Black River in Maine.
Hopefully you’ve enjoyed this look at some of the colder conditions possible in our region and beyond. I bet our Key West, FL store is all too happy to avoid these kinds of conditions.