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Comment by Ralo | Hacker News Reader

Living in Winnipeg, I've had my fair share of -40°C days.

I had some online friends living in California move up to Alaska for work and wanted advice on what to expect. He said experiencing 1-2°C in Oregon was brutal, he couldn't even imagine what -40°C was like.

They moved there and were shocked at how "tame" -40°C is. Perhaps it was bundling up and preparing for the weather but he said there was very noticeable difference with the humidity that made all the difference. It's almost like another scale.

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When it’s -40°. it doesn't matter whether it’s Fahrenheit or Celsius.

When it's -40° Kelvin, it does.

(Well, "intellectual curiosity" wise... "Cognize -40°K. On a tesseract")

° shouldn't be used with Kelvin scale.

You are right, I forgot. In the sixties the "Kelvin" became a Unit of Measure. But it's a convention - it remains a "degree", somehow, though the concept is weak: it indicates discreets, values are continuous. Degrees make more sense when "24.4" does not, while measurements are intended to be ideally precise.

Kelvin doesn't have negative values. 0K is absolute zero.

Yes I know. I afforded a rare joke. In fact, I stated that one can now attempt the intellectual exercise of visualizing -40 Kelvin: there, the interest - theoretical, and supposedly very practical and urgent - is raised which was lost in the poster's stated irrelevance of -40°C vs -40°F.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Negative_temperature

I've lived in SK and AB my entire 40+ years. The coldest I can ever remember experiencing is being in Paris on valentine's day in the early 2000's. It was just below 0c but the humidity made almost unbearable.

I had the same experience when I visited harbin. I knew t was -40C, the ice sculptures clued me in that it was cold, but indoor heating plus dressing appropriately meant I could barely tell. Well, except my digital camera battery lost its charge super quickly (this was back in 2005 or so).

The coldest winter I experienced was in southern China, it was 5C but the humidity, and more importantly, lack of central indoor heating everywhere wore you down very quickly.

Exactly this. I've lived in a part of central America where winter temperatures can drop to between 3 and 6 degrees Celsius but no lower. By the standards of the northern cold I grew up with, it seems like nothing, but in the north, every place, home, public transport and etc had interior heating working at all times during winter, meaning that you'd never notice cold unless you deliberately went outside. The place in central America on the other hand, no indoor heating to speak of, high humidity, and winter misery all around, especially if you're sitting still in your home (as people tend to do).

Temperatures below freezing are not more painful than freezing temp. You just reach pain of freezing faster the further the temp below zero.

Breathing in -40C air is a lot different than breathing in 0C air.

Honestly, If it's -40C with no humidity and no wind it's really not that bad. You learn to breath differently, slower, through your mouth in an elongated shape so that the air can preheat before it hits your lungs.

That was my experience. When you had severe cold snaps and it was below -35C, usually it was dead calm and no wind.

Felt warmer than -20C with a wind.

Also there can’t really be any humidity at those temps.

Ya or when your body just starts vibrating after 5 mins and your eyelashes freeze when you blink and your lips stick when you close your mouth. -40C is very different on the body then 0C

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