What’s the coldest temperature you have ever been in? Plus what is the hottest temperature you have experienced?

The highest recorded temperature in Edinburg was 109.0°F (42.8°C), which was recorded in May. The lowest recorded temperature in Edinburg was 17.0°F (-8.3°C), which was recorded in January. Most of Texas suffered thru a most brutal Winter (2021); no electricity for days for some. We were without electricity only once ~ and it was overnight.
 

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I saw some really cold weather in the Colorado Rockies when I was growing up, and there are times here in the Midwest, during the Winter, that get miserably cold...especially if the wind is blowing fairly hard.

Insofar as heat is concerned, the worst I've seen was when I was Stationed in Thailand in the 1960's. That place has two seasons....hot and wet, and hot and dry. One time, there was a cold front that came through and dropped the nighttime temperatures into the 60's....and the locals were all huddling around small fires trying to keep warm.
 
Harry Le Hermit said:
Unfortunately, I found that to be untrue for a person used to a humid environment.
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i think that depends on the individual and their body. My first 10 yrs of life were in very humid Florida, then teens in NJ. My first experience of a dry heat was Nevada when not quite 19 yrs old. While the breeze blowing hot with temps in triple digits was not comfortable, in general i much prefer a dryer climate and actually less heat. And learned there are climates much drier and cooler than where i was raised that suit me well.
 
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The hottest temperature i've been in was triple digit (105-110F) in dry Nevada. But the heat index along the Gulf Coast? When the temp may only be in 90s but the humidity makes it feel like much hotter and your sweat can't even evaporate to cool you because the air is already so saturated? No thankyou. And don't forget it you have breathing problems especially--that humid air has less oxygen per cubic inch than dry air. So you have to breathe differently to get enough. Even here where generally dryer--if humidity hits 50% i don't do heavy work outside unless crucial i do it that day. And then i come in and lay down with my CPAP for 10 minutes or so to recuperate.

The coldest i've been in was in Laramie, Wyoming. We hit -39F one winter when i was working at UW. But at least i didn't have to be out in it a lot. One more degree colder and they'd have closed for the day. But the day years before when i was driving the Senior Center bus that was a whole degree warmer, only -38F felt a lot worse. The wind was relentless and i was doing our daily pre-trip checks: tires, then standing on the bus bumper doing the fluid checks (5'4" at the time and it was that or drag out a ladder) and according to the weatherman the wind chill factor was closer to -50F.

One of the reasons i moved to NM when i retired is i still get a distinct 4 seasons but there are fewer sub zero nights and sub freezing days than in Wyoming.
 
Coldest was near -30 degrees F and the hottest was when I drove past a fully engulfed house fire. The heat instantly hit me through the car. Oh. This is why firemen keep gawking people away from burning buildings
 
40C in Adelaide, Australia .. the car overheated, forcing us to turn back and go home. I could barely breathe.
Mighty cold/dry winters in Alberta. According to Google, -26F/-32C when I lived there. "High crunch factor" of the snow indicates how cold it is.
 
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Judycat said:
Coldest was near -30 degrees F and the hottest was when I drove past a fully engulfed house fire. The heat instantly hit me through the car. Oh. This is why firemen keep gawking people away from burning buildings
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Yep. Some images that stayed with me from when we were cleaning up what was left of our possessions after our house burnt down when i was 8 yrs old:
1) My hard won (had to beg and plead for it) two wheel bicycle was 3 ft from the house--the rubber tires and inner tubes melted.
2) In my Dad's work shop, all his tools were reduced to unrecognizable lumps of metal on the floor, the wooden walls had burned away of course.
3) i found this weird jointed piece of metal in what had been the kitchen. We had stand at kitchen entry door and remember what had been where before it hit us--that was where the stove had been. Apparently the mechanism that allowed the broiler to swing out was made of a metal that resisted higher temps than rest of stove or any anything else in the house.
 
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I spent 3 months on the North slope of Alaska in winter, where it got down to-40 . My wife is a California girl, and said she had to put on a week's worth of clothes. Here is photo of the bank thermometer in Jackson, Wyoming Wyoming.

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feywon said:
Yep. Some images that stayed with me from when we were cleaning up what was left of our possessions after our house burnt down when i was 8 yrs old:
1) My hard won (had to beg and plead for it) two wheel bicycle was 3 ft from the house--the rubber tires and inner tubes melted.
2) In my Dad's work shop, all his tools were reduced to unrecognizable lumps of metal on the floor, the wooden walls had burned away of course.
3) i found this weird jointed piece of metal in what had been the kitchen. We had stand at kitchen entry door and remember what had been where before it hit us--that was where the stove had been. Apparently the mechanism that allowed the broiler to swing out was made of a metal that resisted higher temps then rest of stove or any anything else in the house.
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I went looking to see how hot a house fire became at its high point. It is recorded at 1100 degrees F.
 
Judycat said:
I went looking to see how hot a house fire became at its high point. It is recorded at 1100 degrees F.
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Don't doubt it for minute, likely some hotter but not measurable at their hottest point. How and what kind of instruments could you get close enough?

And exactly what and why it's burning (like if accelerants used) might make a difference. But having a wood stove the last 9 yrs i know that even various woods burn differently, some faster and hotter than others.
 
I think it's a few times been colder than -30F (-34.4C I guess) but the coldest I remember having to do chores outside was just -30F. It was in Colorado at a bit of an elevation (don't remember exactly, a little less than 7000ft probably). I was so worried about how my horses would do, but they were just fine. I don't see how their eyeballs don't get affected, my eyes and nose suffer the most in cold.

The hottest was +114F (45.5C), in Jericho in the West Bank in Israel, my photos all came out hazy (had one of those polaroid cameras that spit out the photo). ...this motivated me just now to go look in my old photo albums at those pictures - what a trip down memory lane!
 
Years ago, my husband and I drove home in -25F. We lived an hour away from my cousin's house, in Mass. The car's heat was on full blast, and we were super cold anyway.

Maxwell AFB, AL, when I was a kid, 103F.
 
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It has got arround -30 F sometimes where I live here in Colorado when those Canadian cold fronts move in here. In my younger days I would put engine block heaters in my cars and trucks and plug them in when it got below 32 F. Now days when it becomes 32 F or lower I try my best to just stay home. The highest I would say arround 120 F driving through the Nevada Death Valley area. Here in Colorado about 110 F and I do not want to drive a vehicle in that heat so I stay home when it gets above 90 F.
 
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Born and raised in Southern California, so I've seen few extremes.

When I was a teenager, my Dad had the bright idea to drive to Las Vegas for the 4th of July. He said we could set off our fireworks in the desert. It got to 120 F and there were strict laws about fireworks. So, we spent the day in an air conditioned hotel room and he spent his in one of the casinos. We did get to see a fireworks show that evening and we brought ours home to shoot off the next night.

When I was a senior in high school, our football team had a game in Apple Valley in the high desert. I went with a buddy. I knew it would be cold so I bundled up with several layers of clothes. It wasn't enough. It dropped to 18 degrees. I felt sorry for our cheer leaders and flag girls in their skimpy outfits and rosy pink legs. That's the coldest temp I've ever been in.
 
I wasn't so much how cold it got the year I spent on Shemya Island,
it's more the fact that on the warmest day we only got up to 41°F.
A year of howling winds, and white-outs were common.
The cold just never let up.

Hottest had to be the 6 months I spent just outside of Alexandria, Egypt.
You can bundle up for the cold, but it's hard to dress for that kind of heat.
 
Hot ... Phoenix, in August ... got over 120 a few times while living there in the 70's ...
Hotter .. Death Valley, Ca. high 120's, in the summer while visiting... Furnace Creek gets over 130.

Coldest I've ever been, was last year during the 2 day Black/Brown Out we had in Texas during our terrible freeze. No power for two days.
 
The coldest was in Faro, Yukon territory in 1970: -76F at the weather station when we lived there. I remember six weeks that the temp never rose above -60F but we went to work as usual.

The hottest was 125F near Quartzite, Arizona in 1962. We were travelling through on our way to L.A. Wife was 8 months pregnant and three little kids in a car with no a/c. The plan was to drive fast with all the windows open and drink lots of water
 
I think -65 F, Miles City Montana, mid 50's. They didn't close the schools and I had to walk 2 miles home in it.
Lived in Alaska and it didn't get near as cold there, unless you live up by Barrows.
They didn't have "wind chill" when I was a kid! I think the Dakotas get even colder than Montana.
Hottest? Probably around 110F.
 
caroln said:
I was there! I lived 40 miles north of Chicago in Waukegan. I doubt the car would have started, but I'll never know because the door was frozen shut. Besides, it was so cold I couldn't stay outside for long. I think the air froze in my lungs! That played a part in my move to Kentucky where the winters are quite a bit more moderate.
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Small world! We lived west of Chicago, in Streamwood. We drove to St Charles that day, our Chevy had no problems. Inside the car we were toasty warm!

However, please note that we, too, moved south....Arkansas winters are so much better!
 

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