Replies to post #231680 on Tornado Alley (PROG)

[DesertDrifter]

while growing up, i remember many times when the thermometer on the front porch stopped at -38... since that is the freezing point of mercury and we didn't have an alcohol thermometer.

once i got over the idea that i was going to be a full-time athlete, i learned the freezing point of beer, wine, and other spirits. which a few times meant a clean-up of the interior of a car with such things left in it over night.

One true story i know (not a personal acquaintance) is of that a guy out snowmobiling at -42 kept a bottle of schnapps in his snowmobile's tool box. Snowmobile suits make bombing around on them at that temperature recreational for cooped-up people. He stopped, took a huge gulp from the bottle, and instantly his throat froze solid and he asphyxiated before it thawed. It was an object lesson not lost on fellow north dakotans.

[bulldzr]

fuagf... I have 2-3 worst colds... but the coldest was probably Dec 1976, Bismarck, ND. I was a strappin 22 year old with a brand new company car, Chevy Malibu Classic with a 350 motor... it was 35 degrees below and in spite of having a Holubar down filled parka with hood I could not walk the 200 yards to the service station into the wind. My lungs were saying "screw you" and I had to walk backwards. That brand new care only made a groan... took me until 11 o'clock to get it started.