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Comment by metadat | Hacker News Reader

Isn't this fairly typical in Canadia and Alaska?

Edit: Thanks everyone, I've come to assume Alaskan and Canadian winters are extreme. It appears to be slightly less so than I realized.

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When it’s really really cold it is usually very calm winds. This lets the cold air pool near the ground. It’s unusual to have really extreme cold and high wind.

This story is a little weird bc the coldest temp ever recorded is -128.6 on the Vostok ice sheet in Antarctic which is well below the wind chill.

I also remember reading the book minus 148 about the first winter ascent of Denali in Alaska. The book is named after the coldest temp on the wind chill chart bc those guys survived in conditions that were literally off the chart. If I recall it was -50 to -60 and blowing 100 mph.

Seems like some slightly sensational writing by NYT. I’d maybe accept it if they said lowest wind chill in lower 48

Not really.

Check the data at [0] 04-Feb-2023 03:49h. Temperature is -47°F and wind is 89mph sustained, wind chill is -108°F. Gusts earlier and later were well over 100mph.

The tropopause actually dipped down below the summit, so these were actual stratospheric conditions.

Sure, there's wind, and there's cold, but not usually in these combinations. Fun times (if you've got the shelter and gear).

[0] https://w1.weather.gov/obhistory/KMWN.html

A windchill of just under 78°C is *not* common anywhere I'm aware of in Canada. There are usually a handful of days each year in places like Fort McMurray that will hit windchill values in the -40-60° range, otherwise most of the population won't experience anything colder than -30° on the coldest of days. Here in SW Ontario we just had a couple days touching -20° windchill on -13° real temperature, and those will probably end up being the coldest days of the season/year.

Maybe if you accidentally open a car window while doing 70mph through an alaskan winter. Such wind speeds are not normal.

When not on mountain tops, weather below -30 (c or f) generally results in calmer winds. Below -40 most weather stops. So epic windchill is actually rather rare. (It hits -40c regularly where i am, with occasional trips towards -50.)

There was an extreme wind chill at the Quintette mine at Tumbler Ridge, British Columbia in the 1980s that was in this neighbourhood (I was told -113F by my father). There's no official recording, because there was no Environment Canada weather station up at the Mesa pit.

I worked there in the 90s and experienced extreme cold (-53C), but not the wind chill. Astounding bit of trivia: I forgot to plug in my truck and it started. Also, if you've never driven in those conditions, your tires freeze with a flat side and it takes a while to work the bump out of them.

I lived about an hour north of Montreal, where the temperatures are always colder than in the city. I remember my eyelashes frosting and wearing a snowsuit to walk 15 minutes to work. Frostbite is a yearly danger and windchill is taken seriously.

https://news.yahoo.com/threat-50-wind-chills-across-13304775...

Alaska sometimes gets wind chills that low, but I don't think it's typical. A quick websearch for Alaskan windchill records didn't turn up anything conclusive but a few results suggesting record-setting chills of -97 F and other claims in that neighborhood.

Fun fact: the Antarctican interior sometimes gets cold enough to freeze CO2 (if the CO2 were at 1 atmosphere of partial pressure, which it isn't in air.)

While most of Canada doesn't get weather this cold or wind this high, producing such a low wind chill, most of Canada is not at 6,000 feet either. Perhaps colder weather has occurred on top of the Rocky Mountains.

Not fairly common, this is a new record.

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