When we lived in Northern BC our theme song was ....

Home, home on the range
Where the moose and the grizzly bear roam
Where nothing will grow
Cause it's forty below
From June till the end of next May

Coldest I was in was about minus forty five celsius with a STRONG wind blowing. I think exposed flesh froze instantly.

My coldest is -40 C. It was in the Ottawa Valley many years ago. What is most memorable is not the effect on me but on my bicycle. The lubrication in the freewheel of my 10-speed became too viscous to for the little parts that cause the clicking sound when coasting to move. I had to pedal for a while to generate enough friction heat to dislodge one so I could get some traction. Once moving I had to pedal continuously or I would be stuck again. Another thing about 40 below is that ice is not very slippery...a good thing when one is obligated to keep pedaling downhill.

Yikes - I could not trust myself on a bike on ice!

Another thing about our winters - they are L O N G ! Not just two months like lots of countries but up to six continuous months with cold and snow.

I also dislike the effects on our vegetation. We can not grow many types of trees. I currently live in the coldest gardening zone. We are zone 1a and interior BC, for example, can be up to 8 or 9, same as most of the UK. I would do nearly anything to be able to grow oak trees, for example, that grow easily many places.

Put it this way - we have 90 frost-free days a year. That is it.

markrosey:
Take our word for it -40C is MUCH colder than 2C and raining. When it is so cold that you can hardly breath and when exposed skin freezes in minutes - that's cold. When I was a little kid my mother would wrap a scarf around my face, covering my mouth and nose (so the air would get warmed enough to breathe - another scarf around my neck, a tuque on my head, another scarf around my forehead AND any facial areas still uncovered would be coated in vaseline - all that just to keep my skin from getting frost bitten on a 20 minute walk to school. (Plus of course, 3 layers of mittens, a full snowsuit with hood, 2 sweaters underneath, boots with triple socks). Anyone remember being dumb enough as a kid to run when it was this cold and then getting chest pains for 10 minutes? (For those not experienced with northern climes, it's the freezing cold air, frost biting your lung tissue and it HURTS!)

No wonder I find Toronto positively balmy most of the time in winter.

This was not in Canada and I don't know exactly how cold it was but I was in a little town in Ohio once when it got so cold, the traffic lights froze. Literally, I suppose, it was the switches that controlled them that froze but the effect was permanent red on one street and permanent green on the cross street.

Chicago January 20, 1985 when the thermometer read 27 degrees below zero. (i.e., -32C)

Anyone else have fond (not!) memories of the "tinglies" in your fingers and toes as they thaw out after playing outside in cold weather? My mom used to bundle us up and send us out; when it got really cold, we would build tunnels through the snowdrift that formed against our neighbour's fence, and pretend it was an igloo. But sooner or later, you got too cold and had to go in and deal with the tinglies.

I remember the tinglies! We would play in the tunnels until we could not stand it any more.

Growing up on a farm we had to milk cows before school and in the evenings, too. That is my worst winter memory - having to go out in the pitch black at -40 Celsius and milk the cows, getting swatted with rock-hard-manure-encrusted tails. Then carry the milk to the house (sometimes it developed ice crystals on the way), separate the milk, then go back out and feed the calves out of the milk pails.

When I was 16 I was involved in a serious canoe accident and had major hypothermia. To this day cold unfortunately feels even worse. My extremities have a hard time warming up from about November 1 through April!

Is it just me or do you think that kids do not play or work outside as much these days?

-46.9° working at the weather station at LG4 in James Bay. It didn't go above -30° for two weeks. It was sunny though and sunbathed wrapped in down.

-48F Mont St Anne sometime in the late 1960's. The ski center was closed it was so *%&#^%@ cold.