How HOT do you feel now? - 04 Feb 11

Currently outside here in Austin, Texas it is now +38ºF. It feels like +85ºF compared to what we have woke up to the last two or three mornings. I am back into a T shirt and need sun screen.

I remember the feeling well. After you have been down for so long – even in the teens and twenties – when you go back above certain break points; it feels like its down right HOT.

Surviving in the Army in Alaska some time ago, I learned this lesson very well. That +32ºF point is one of those breaks. There are more below that temperature – believe it or not.

Here’s a couple of pix of the kids outside. The initial few are with the temp close to -30ºF and then what they looked like when the temp had climbed to close to 0ºF. Oh yah, I shoveled that sidewalk. You can’t tell very well but the kids are hunting Easter eggs at 0ºF after a week way below that.

We took a walk over to the river just behind our quarters in late January after the temp had us down for a while. This time again it was close to 0ºF after being down around -30ºF for a couple of weeks. That’s the river ice scraped away. Everybody warmed up with the walk and I couldn’t keep their jackets on them.

The kids used our front yard as the neighborhood sled hill. That’s my son in the brown snow suit. It may be hard to tell but that ice you can see in the next pix was actually put on the hill with a garden hose after the kids had prepared it for that event. They could fly for fifty yards or more after the ice application.

Coming back up from the neighborhood of -50ºF, the next break point you hit is around -30ºF. How can -30ºF be warm? That I can’t explain; you just have to take my word for it – it is.

We spent a lot of time at Ft Greely and was fortunate enough to have been visited by a herd of Buffalo just strolling through our bivouac area at -85ºF. About a week later it was close to -50ºF and I had trouble keeping my troops in their field jackets while fueling choppers that didn’t shut down during the task. Have you got any idea how cold it is under a Chinook (CH-47) that doesn’t shut down during refueling? The wind blast is close to 35 – 50 MPH under there.

Below -50ºF and particularly anything below -75ºF to -85ºF; I defy you to be able to tell the difference; at least down to -112ºF, I believe this to be true. I’ve been there and just don’t believe there is a difference.

Outside now the sun is beginning to cover the entire backyard and that +38ºF temp will quickly start heading back down and I won’t be in a T shirt when I take the pups out to play ball in just a little bit – No way!