Reports are coming in from all over New York City that it is indeed cold outside. What appeared to be some sort of frozen rain fell from the sky and laid out on the sidewalks recently as if it were some kind of all-encompassing blanket. People have been milling around on the sidewalks in jackets and snow hats with their faces contorted into grimaces as they try and valiantly make it through unending walls of this mysterious white, powdery substance.
How cold can it possibly get? People are up in arms about this. The Chicago Tribune — a longtime leader in low time temperatures — cited, “… the storm comes one day after the city recorded its earliest sub-zero temperature in 18 years and the first time the temperature has fallen to six degrees below zero this early in the season since 1978.”
If you’re still at odds with how cold it is, dig if you will, this picture: this summer the coldest temperature on Earth was recorded, a harrowing -135.8°F. According to ABC News:
“Ice scientist Ted Scambos at the National Snow and Ice Data Center said the new record is ’50 degrees colder than anything that has ever been seen in Alaska or Siberia or certainly North Dakota. It’s more like you’d see on Mars on a nice summer day in the poles,’ Scambos said, from the American Geophysical Union scientific meeting in San Francisco Monday, where he announced the data. ‘I’m confident that these pockets are the coldest places on Earth.’
However, it won’t be in the Guinness Book of World Records because these were satellite measured, not from thermometers, Scambos said.
‘Thank God, I don’t know how exactly it feels,’ Scambos said. But he said scientists do routinely make naked 100 degree below zero dashes outside in the South Pole, so people can survive that temperature for about three minutes.
Most of the time researchers need to breathe through a snorkel that brings air into the coat through a sleeve and warms it up ‘so you don’t inhale by accident’ the cold air, Scambos said.”
A SNORKEL TO GET AIR, YOU GUYS. That’s like the fuckin’ Snorks. THE SNORKS. And here I was thinking *I* was cold when in actual fact there are colder things on this planet than I could possibly imagine. I’ve lived in Chicago. That place is as cold as a miser’s dick, but this? This NEGATIVE ONE HUNDRED AND THIRTY EIGHT DEGREES kind of cold? That’s impressive. That’s actually impressive how insanely cold that is. And the fact that scientists run naked in the cold is probably the funniest thing all day. Oh well.
Advice for the cold weather is to:
- Stay inside.
- Don’t go outside.
- Wrap up (in clothes).
- Rap up (with words).
- Cut off phone line.
- Cut off Internet.
- Cut off jean shorts (fashionable!)
- Eat heartily.
- Caulk all windowsills.
- Caulk all doors.
- Halt all friendships.
- Eat pages of the Bible for strength, sustenance.
- Make a candle your only source of light, entertainment.
- Eschew human friendships for new “shadow” friends (see above).