Google Doodle celebrates Canada’s coldest day, -63 ℃ | Hacker News Reader

Google Doodle celebrates Canada’s coldest day, -63 ℃

ottawacitizen.com

100 pointsgruseom51 comments

I've seen the wrong side of -40, when I was flying to work in Ft McMurray, Alberta for a consulting job.

One time, I drew the short straw and had to go pick up our SUVs at the parking lot upon landing. They were outside, plugged in.

The car started with the saddest sound I ever heard a mechanical thing make.

I put it in reverse, hit the gas, and pulled out of the spot. Then I put it in drive and hit the gas- and the car moved backwards. Every gear except for Park and Neutral did the same thing: reverse.

I reversed around the airport parking lot to the terminal and walked into the Hertz. When I explained the problem, they had clearly heard it before. "Don't worry about it. Just leave it on for a few minutes and you'll be fine. Transmission fluid's frozen."

You didn't let it warm up?

In the Yukon, it's critical you let your car warm up. A block heater, battery blanket and oil pan heater are all needed, but they're only heating the actual engine block.

Think about how cold the oil in the transmission and diffs are.. let alone everything else.

You also want to drive extremely smoothly and slowly for the first ~5 mins to let everything circulate and slowly warm up to running temp - sudden moves or turns tears apart CV joints, and destroys other rubber seals.

These are aspects to driving vehicles most people do not even begin to need to think about.

Especially nowadays, I know that my 72 Chevy had a instructions for cold start (<32 I believe) on the back of the driver's visor which included idling for a few minutes. I've noticed people tend to turn their car on after getting situated but I still have a habit of turning it over as soon as I get in to let it warm up even though that car is, sadly, gone for now.

All the geegaws on a modern engine make it less important.

Hahaha.

Have you seen what engine oil looks like past -35C?

Butter. Same color, same consistency. You can cut and spread it with a knife. Those geegaws aren't helping there.

Also, there is a hell of a lot more in a vehicle that's sensitive to extreme cold than an engine.

Hohoho?

I said less for a reason. Most people don't have to worry about -35C. Cars start reliably down to fairly low temperatures, so they don't need to worry about it.

>Most people don't have to worry about -35C.

We're replying in a thread about someone trying to use a vehicle at -40C...

>Cars start reliably down to fairly low temperatures

Start? As the parent comment states, that's the least of your problems.

I replied to a comment that mentioned <32 Fahrenheit.

Sure, it may be less important, but I'd hate for someone to think that means it's majorly less important (in other terms, unimportant).. letting a car warm up in cold weather is good for it, regardless of innovations.

Most of the time it just wastes gas. Well, beyond making the cabin comfortable it just wastes gas.

My fave is when the wheels freeze to the ground; so when the noob guns it - since the truck seems reasonably warm, yet stuck - the drive shaft snaps. Depending which universal joint breaks, the flailing remains can cause impressive damage.

The tires are going to be "square" for the first twenty minutes anyway, so unless you really enjoy having the fillings shaken out of your teeth...

I'm from Yellowknife, about 1000mi north of Ft McMurray. More often than not, we hit -45C with a windchill of ~ -60c. The coldest it's ever been up here was -52c in 1947, if I'm not mistaken..

You must love the cold. I cannot fathom living in an area like that.

yeah, but it's a dry cold. Besides I don't mind the cold as much as I hate the darkness during the winter months.

I'm from Regina, Saskatchewan and for the first time in my life, I can honestly say that our mere -45 windchills don't sound so bad. :)

Stay warm!!

Grew up in Saskatchewan as well (Prince Albert). So, so glad I live in Vancouver now. The people were great but the weather in PA was absolutely soul crushing throughout the winter. Vancouver rarely drops into the minus and we get maybe 1-2 snowfalls a year (which usually melt as it falls). Feel like it's the tropics over here whenever I get back from visiting family/friends in PA.

I'm originally from Saskatoon, and remember a day around 2004 or 2005 where it was in the -40s, -62 with the windchill. Once was enough - I can't imagine "more often than not"!

I visited Changchun and Harbin one winter, as I was on the bus from the former to the latter, I watched the thermometer (ya, all these buses prominently displayed the outside temperature) drop from about -25 to -40...suffice it to say, my digital camera stopped working after about 5 minutes.

When I got back to beijing, it was only -10, I felt like I could wear shorts.

You need to warm a car for at least 15 minutes when it's that cold...

Even in Finland, with comparatively mild winters, cars have preheaters with timers, and most residential parking lots have an electric socket on each space for plugging cars in.

At least your power steering system was ok or you would have only been able to reverse in a straight line without the significant effort of wrenching on the wheel.

I live up in the Yukon and drove into Snag in the fall looking for Moose.

The history of the old abandoned town there is really cool, as were the Northern lights. We spent a couple of days wandering around all the old buildings, etc.

Pics here: http://theroadchoseme.com/more-yukon-fall-camping-2011

This year up on the Dempster for Caribou hunting, I saw -45C, the coldest I've seen yet. We were outside for the whole day snowshoeing around, it was spectacularly beautiful.

Lots of my friends up here have seen -55C.

Balmy Canada.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oymyakon

Oymyakon and Verkhoyansk are the only two permanently inhabited places in the world that have recorded temperatures below −60.0 °C (−76 °F) for every day in January. Oymyakon has never recorded an above freezing temperature between October 25 and March 17.

Random crazy idea alert:

This is actually close to the temperature to sublimate CO2. I'm curious why we couldn't lower the temperature a little more and pull carbon out of the air? Has anyone investigated that?

Maybe I should buy some land there and start making dry ice and selling carbon offsets?

The partial pressure is too low:

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/13/results-lab-experiment...

But you just need to lower the temperature another 20-40 degrees. It would still take some energy but since youre starting at such a low temp It would seem it would save a lot of energy.

The link is pretty convincing. What it amounts to is that there is so little CO2 in the air that sublimation into the air happens faster than any freezing out of the air.

"thermometers don't use mercury"

uhh... many of them do in fact use mercury..

Indeed, the article errs on that general statement. But it seems per Wikipedia that pure-mercury thermometers become unusable at -39C, when mercury solidifies. A mercury-thallium alloy can go to -61C, but apparently alcohol thermometers are preferred for measuring extreme cold, as they work to -70C. So the actual observed thermometers on that record day – those thermometers – likely did not use mercury.

Up here in the Yukon mercury thermometers aren't all that helpful because they only go to -40C.

It's fun when all the thermometers are pegged at -40C at midday in full sun, and you don't see them move for a week :)

The physics of this article was incredible to think about. It must have been like visiting another world.

Goddamn, there are places actually above the arctic circle with milder climates than this. Tromsø, Norway, has a low of -6 C (21 F) over the next week! And highs above freezing!

The Gulf Stream is a wonderful thing. Without it, Tromsø would be a frozen wasteland.

>100.000 people smiling now at Norilsk :)

Taken several days ago - http://s2.pikabu.ru/post_img2/2014/01/30/9/1391089429_818451...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norilsk

Thats -81.4(F), btw.

Wow. When I heard -60, I thought Fahrenheit. Christ.

In 1981 when I was just out of boot camp and waiting for BE/E school at Great Lakes, IL, we had to patrol the base for I think it was 4 hours. It was -80 F wind chill factor. I thought I was going to die. I can't imagine being somewhere where the normal temperature on a given day is that cold. The wind chill must be unbearable to be outside for long.

Made me think of Vernor Vinge's "A Deepness in the Sky"[1], which is set on a planet where the atmosphere freezes and snows to the ground before thawing again (in 250 year cycles).

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Deepness_in_the_Sky#Backgroun...

Of course, the best bit is why the atmosphere freezes (i.e. why the On/Off star acts like it does)

I can't imagine what that must be like. OTOH, I've been out in a few days where it was over 45C, and that's not pleasant either.

I've seen +47.8C (in Australia) and -45C (in northern Canada).

I'm still hoping for the full 100C temp swing, which I'm getting mighty close to :)

Hahah, nice ! I've seen 50C in the Sahara desert but never below -20C. Guess I should try spending a winter in Canada :)

Am in Aus and experienced 43c this summer, and have been on a husky safari in Lapland at -40c.

I can't recommend a husky safari enough:

http://www.harriniva.fi/en/destinations/harriniva/programme-...

It's -24C in Waterloo, ON right now. I think I might work from home tomorrow...

lol makes me feel like a wimp for feeling like -20 was cold.

"Climate Change"

Whilst no single weather event can be linked directly to climate change, this is, surprisingly, consistent with a global increase in temperature. Whilst the rest of the Northern Hemisphere is warmer than it ever has been, Canada and the North Eastern US freezes due to an alteration to the jet stream: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XZGsdnYqbjk

Just a few days ago we had this: https://xkcd.com/1321/

"Toaster Waffles"

Am I doing it right?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com