What is the cold like?

Ron Niebrugge Alaska, Photos, Travel, Wrangell-St. Elias Leave a Comment

Wrangell Mountains

Weird things happen during extreme cold.  Some you may have heard about, others you may not have. 

You may have heard about square tires during the cold and that really does happen.  Actually they don’t turn square, but the flat portion resting against the ground stays flat when you first begin driving providing a slow, clunk, clunk, clunk feeling as the flat part on all 4 tires rotates around.  Our family car wouldn’t shift into forward gears during real cold weather, we had to turn circles in reverse – clunk, clunk, clunk… for a minute or so, then the car would shift into a forward gear, and the tires would round out.

If you take a cup full of hot water and throw it up into the area when it is at least -60, the water just vaporizes – nothing falls back to the ground.

Plastic turns hard and brittle like glass.  No moving extension cords at that temperature – to plug your car in, you needed to pull your car up to the upright portion of the cord where you last left it – if you went too far the cord just snapped off.  Plastic covered car seats always cracked leaving the seat full of tears the rest of the year.  I know of someone who hit their dash in frustration when their car wouldn’t start and shattered the whole thing!  Wood also becomes brittle, you had to walk gently on our deck, and even then you could hear it crack.  It was a great time to split wood, large logs split effortlessly in the cold.

Houses didn’t fair much better then cars.  Any electric outlet on an outside wall was worthless as they would grow huge frost balls – on the inside!  Even our triple pane windows would frost over on the inside.  We lived for awhile in a mobile home with double pane windows, and they would completely frost over.  I remember my mom getting frustrated from not being able to see outside so she got out her hair dryer and a bunch of towels and melted the ice off the inside of our windows – they stayed clear for one day. 

It was almost like you would fear the air.  You couldn’t let it touch you, or you would get frost bit.  You couldn’t breath it, even your mouth and face had to be covered.  Open the front door and you could see the air rush into the house.  Any house plants nearby would be toast.

 So in a nutshell, unless you are splitting wood, extreme cold really isn’t any fun.  Writing this reminds me how good we have it here in Seward!

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