I keep reading about how cold it is outside….heck you have not seen anything.  Ya, I step outside without my coat and gloves and sure…it’s cold, but then I didn’t wear the right stuff to be out in it.  My bad, my fault.

If I was ice fishing I would have all the right stuff on and then I would not even feel the cold at all.  Plus I would be busy pulling in fish and it would take a heap of cold to make me feel it.

Heck I was on a dream hunt a few years back where the outside temp was MINUS 20 with a slight breeze blowing.  The kind of cold that caused you to put your open beer inside the ring of rocks when you were sitting around the fire to keep it from freezing.  When the temp rose to ZERO we were taking off our coats.  And forget about wiping your nose, you just reached up and broke off whatever was hanging down.

So, sure the temp right now outside my house reads 12 degrees..and the dog hurries out and right back in, but what the heck, it’s January for heck sakes and we need ice up at Bear Lake for the Cisco run right?

So, to help you feel a little better about your current outside environment I did a bit of research.  First off a bit of background.  I worked very closely with the US Geological Survey people and they spend a LOT of time down at Antarctica, they even brag about how they don’t need coolers down there to keep their drinks cold.  My closest associate said it was so cold, he couldn’t even “think about going out” without getting frost bitten…give me a break….sounds like a beer drinking story to me.

So here is what I found.  The highest recorded HOT temperature in the WORLD was 136.4 degrees Fahrenheit.  That is hot enough to cook a turkey in a closed dutch oven right there!  I’ll guarantee you I would not like to be in that hot of a place.  Lybia as it turned out.

But we are talking about cold here.  I’ve already told your about my experience of how the temperature rose 20 degrees and how warm it actually seemed to us, even though it was still quite cold.  The COLDEST temperature of anywhere in the world turned out to be in, where else?…Antarctica…MINUS 129 degrees!

Can you believe it?  What would it be like to step out to get the paper in 129 degree below zero temperature?  Even the dog would freeze up “thinking about going out” in that.  So, with a temperature that low, warming up to say Zero, you would be taking all your clothes off and jumping in the snow to try and get cool.

So, don’t talk to me any more about being cold.

Enjoy this global warming we have going on!

EDIT

And so that was where this story was going to end, but there is more that developed just after I posted this.

Sherry and I were enjoying each others company like we do every night, when suddenly from the direction of the garage a huge POP was heard.  What was that?  She asked.  I don’t know, but I’ll check…said I.  And out the garage door I went.

I didn’t see anything at first but then I looked down at a piece of old carpet that I removed last week while painting the bedroom….there was something that wasn’t there the last time I looked.  And then the story started to develop.

We have some soda cartons sitting out there in case the kids want a cold drink.  Usually they get cold enough to drink but never freeze…tonight one of them cans had had just about enough of the super cold it faced and exploded inside the carton!  The lid blew out the side of the box and frozen soda went flying.

Of course our little dog, MaPas enjoyed helping with the cleanup.

A closer look at the carton shows you clearly the devastating power of a POed frozen pop….

Notice the type of soda it was.  The Squirts and the Sprites can handle the cold, but not the Diet Coke…wimpy?….Or perhaps the others have more “Fat” to keep them warmer?

That was a pretty good little explosion.  I’m real glad it doesn’t happen to my kind of drinks.

I brought all of the cartons inside so the mess will be contained better.  It’s pretty cold outside folks!

Bears Butt

Jan. 13, 2013