The Cold

Homeboy Andrew Dahl wrote this a couple days ago, and I liked it enough to bring it to these parts. I hope you're surviving out there. I can only complain about the darkness and the wetness. There have been three days of sun in the last month and most days it rains or snows.

"A lot of my friends who aren't so blessed as to live in Minnesota have asked me what it's like to be in such a cold place. Some of you have never seen snow. Some of you complain about the "damp cold" of the East Coast. I thought I'd briefly explain what it's like, since it's about the only thing that any of us can think about right now.

"So today, January 18, is pretty fucking cold. The low temperature is -10F, the high is 5F (though it doesn't look like we'll actually make that), current temperature is -1F at 11:00 am. But inevitably, temperature is actually somewhat irrelevant. Minneapolis is essentially on the edge of the prairie, and extremely flat. It's windier than fuck. So we have this thing called "wind chill," which is some formulaic measure of how cold it actually feels outside, taking wind speed into account. The wind chill right now is -23F.

"Now, when you live here, the cold doesn't seem so bad. Your body chemistry actually changes, starting around October, and if you spend enough time outside to adjust, it doesn't feel so bad by December. But, once it gets below 10F, your exposed skin starts to hurt. The air starts to feel like a constant slap across your face. If you wear glasses, the part where it touches your nose is excrutiatingly painful. Below 10, it really feels like you're having a drill bored into your temple.

"The whole sky changes. The air is so dry that there are rarely clouds. It's perfectly clear and sunny (that is, from about 8:00 am to 4:30 pm, when the sun starts to go down), but the sun doesn't warm you at all. There's no temperature difference between sun and shade. The steam from all the smokestacks crystalizes into thick plumes, creating vertical clouds throughout the city. Without any moisture in the air, sound carries for miles and every noise sounds crisp and hallow. Sometimes, if a tree has enough moisture in it, its tissues will freeze and expand, and the tree will explode in the middle of the night.

"As I was leaving for work, my girlfriend was taking her dog out for a walk. Within three feet of the door, he stopped walking and tried to go back inside. The cold air made him start choking and she had to pry open his mouth so he could breath.

"I had to walk across the Mississippi to get downtown. The wind was seering on the little bit of exposed skin on my face. You have to cover your mouth if you're outside for more than a few minutes because inhaling air that cold will give you bronchitis or pneumonia. If you inhale deeply without your mouth covered, you can feel your lungs painfully seize up and cramp. The steam from my breath collected on my eyelashes and I had to remove chunks of ice from my eyes once I got inside. What's really annoying is when the snot inside your nose freezes and you have to keep wiggling it so you can breathe.

"When it's this cold, the weather reports often include a warning of how long you can leave skin exposed to the air. When it's this cold, they warn that any skin exposed for much more than twenty minutes will be frost bitten, which means that the moisture in your skin cells has frozen and the cells have died. Frost bite is essentially like a burn, with third degree frostbite often leaving the skin black and dead. Really bad frost bite sometimes requires amputation.

"Hypothermia results from the body's temperature being too low to support normal functioning. Last year, a man was found in oustate Minnesota, with his face frozen to the road. He died from being too cold, and they had to srape his body off the pavement. When I was in elementary school, they often cancelled school because it was too cold. The diesel busses wouldn't start, and kids walking to school or waiting for the bus were seriously at risk.

"So that's what it's like. Tomorrow looks a little worse; high of 0, low of -14. I hope you're doing fine in whatever more comfortable part of the world you are... panzy."

I am reminded of this winter foray to Minnehaha Falls.