Coldest you've seen the mercury drop to

[jeepcache]

we usually get theat low in feb. i dont know what is with this place, but it gets colder here than it does in Alaska. i'll be sure to put up pics this winter

[RiponredTJ]

You guys get much nastier weather than we do.
We have some cold snaps but usually it's pretty liveable.

[paddyboy2u]

I know what you mean, with you being in Minot, and not being to far from our farm in Lake Metagoshe, I have been there when it was like -35 and having to go out and feed the cattle. We no long have the cattle so now when we are therein the winter I dont have to go and freeze my butt off.

[MoneyGuy]

I dislike these discussions because the temps are often wrong and perpetrate the belief that Canadian temps are a lot colder than they really are. I may be wrong but am very sceptical when I see people reporting temps of -55C and -51F as have been mentioned in this thread. Those may be windchills but folks just think it gets that cold. Those temps may have been recorded, but in tiny places generally way up north.

In the last 131 years, the coldest temp in any major Canadian centre was -47.8C in Winnipeg - in 1879!!! (Source: Wikipedia.) Edmonton recorded -46.1C in 2009. Other than those, there have never been lower temps other than smaller communities (usually in the far north).

I have a nephew who told me he worked outside and remembers a temp of minus 50-something (in Edmonton). He didn't believe me when I told him it's never been that cold in Edmonton and I won a bet when I proved I was right.

Maybe with windchills, I'll give you that, but people toss those extreme temps around like those temps actually occured. I find they're almost never correct. Sorry, when I hear people say, "I remember back in the winter of such-and-such we had -50C weather for a week straight (or something similar)," I just don't buy it.

BTW, I live near edmonton and last year's -46.1C was brutal. I know some people took the windchill and bragged about the temperature of -55 (or whatever it was). Simply not so.

[RiponredTJ]

I tend to agree.

As far as Montreal is concerned, the Great White North is a myth.

Sure we get a lot of snow sometimes, and it does get pretty cold for a spell or two, but usually it's pretty bearable here.

[paulsub63]

Originally Posted by mtngirl

Well, I grew up in Northern Alberta and moved around far too much around Canada, but my grandma is from and currently lives in Aklavik, NWT... last February I visited her and the temperatures stayed around -40?C ... that was pretty cold for me, especially since I live south of the border in Virginia now. But I just did a little google search on temperatures and found this little fact:

The lowest recorded temperature was -71?F (–57.2?C) at Fort Smith on 26 December 1917
(The Northwest Territories)

I've personally seen -62f (-52C) in January 1975, and -47C (-52.6F) in January 1996 in Whitehorse, Yukon.

If you go to this wikipedia page, you'll find the two coldest temperatures recorded in Canada are both in Yukon Territory.

List of extreme temperatures in Canada - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

May 26, 1991 Mount Logan −77.5 ?C
February 3, 1947 Snag, Yukon −63.0 ?C[1]
January 11, 1911 Fort Vermilion, Alberta −61.1 ?C
January 31, 1947 Smith River, British Columbia −58.9 ?C
January 23, 1935 Iroquois Falls, Ontario −58.3 ?C
February 13, 1973 Shephard Bay, Nunavut −57.8 ?C
December 26, 1917 Fort Smith, Northwest Territories −57.2 ?C
February 1, 1893 Prince Albert, Saskatchewan −56.7 ?C
February 5, 1923 Doucet, Quebec −54.4 ?C
January 9, 1899 Norway House, Manitoba −52.8 ?C
February 17, 1973 Esker 2, Newfoundland and Labrador −51.1 ?C
December 24, 1879 Winnipeg, Manitoba −47.8 ?C
December 13, 2009 Edmonton, Alberta −46.1 ?C [5]
February 10, 1967 Iqaluit, Nunavut −45.6 ?C
January 31, 1920 Upper Stewiacke, Nova Scotia −41.1 ?C

p.s. Mount Logan is in Yukon.

I'm sure there are places where people live that get much colder than normal though... Antarctica anyone?

The cold temperature in Snag -63C (-81 Farenheit) was with no windchill. The air was so dense that a guy walking outside could hear people talking a few miles away. Snag no-longer has a regular population, but at the time was an airstrip with a weather station.

[killercal]

Originally Posted by RiponredTJ

I tend to agree.

As far as Montreal is concerned, the Great White North is a myth.

Sure we get a lot of snow sometimes, and it does get pretty cold for a spell or two, but usually it's pretty bearable here.

Hey, you guys have ski hills near there. I remember going on a ski trip one year that you guys were getting hammered with snow. When we got to our chalet we had to dig ourseves in...two days later we were playing on the grass because all the snow melted. We were there for 5 days and only got one day of skiing in.

[ccleaver2]

The Coldest ive seen is -56 degrees celcious up in Huntsville Ontario

[cklages]

When I was a young gaffer, we did not use these 'equivalent' temperatures to determine windchill. When we turned on the radio in the morning, they gave us the windchill in watts per square metre. I don't remember specifics, but I do remember no more buses at 2300, school was shut down at 2500 and I clearly remember hitting 2850 one blustery winter morn. This was in Churchill, MB in the 80's.

[RiponredTJ]

Originally Posted by killercal

Hey, you guys have ski hills near there. I remember going on a ski trip one year that you guys were getting hammered with snow. When we got to our chalet we had to dig ourseves in...two days later we were playing on the grass because all the snow melted. We were there for 5 days and only got one day of skiing in.

That happened to me at Sugarbush once. But that one day of skiing was powderfull and memorable.

Mother Nature can be a cruel mistress .