-10C winter is unpleasant. -20C winter is dangerous.

-40C winter is cruel. This was the reality of living in Komi Republic — the place I was born in.
Winters there combine extreme dryness with extreme cold. Steel on steel always sparks — gotta be careful at gas stations. Because there is no wind, you don’t actually feel like you’re freezing until it’s too late. If you’re drunk — and everyone there was drunk — you’re walking home, you see a bench, you think: “I’ll just rest for five minutes, no big deal”, and you’re found frozen to death the following morning.

My grandpa once forgot one year old me on the street at night, while — you guessed it — going to get something to drink. I spent something like three hours out there.

I barely made it. Now, my legs don’t feel cold anymore.

And here I bought air conditioner since it's unbearably hot and humid here. Damn you had it hard.

@MaddScientist tbh I can barely survive when it’s hot. I’d rather live in Iceland or Norway than, say, Phoenix

I usually say that I like the cold, but that be too cold. Coldest I had ever dealt with was -16 C.

Around Texas, during the summer in some places we get around 45C.

Being exposed to fkn cold and fkn hot, I kinda do find fkn cold more comfortable, but -40 is (as you said) fkn cruel.

And your grandpa sucks

I've been out in -53c. I know the feeling of true cold, and I've heard of a lot of shitty freezing to death stories.

There's a short story "To Build a Fire" that portrays the experience very well

Where I live there is a big range of temperatures that can happen over different seasons.

It is mostly between -10°C in the winter and up to +38°C in the summer.

There were also some asshole years when temperature dropped down to -22°C during the winter and rose up to +46°C in the summer.

When I was in Ireland, there was a "heat wave" and the highest temperature was 28°C - on that day I was able to wear t-shirt but not short pants, it was like: "now i can finnaly turn of the heating"!

Ireland is usually always like between 5°C and 22°C - it is like eternal autumn, no much changes between the seasons.

Just imagining -40°C chills my bones.

Also wanted to say that your grandpa sucks, in some other universe you would become iceman or some shit, but in this shitty one, you are just injured for life!

sad.gif

@lungdart matter of fact, I covered this story here as an example of Jack London mocking toxic masculinity before the concept existed. The protagonist deemed those cautious of cold “feminine men” afaik

@kiki yeah I think you're right.

Anything is better than India/China