The Cold Truth: Myths and Realities by Jasmine Budak, Up Here Magazine, Jan 2007

Cracking the Myths and exposing the realities of minus 40

During the dark days of the deep Northern winter, when your nose-hairs freeze and snow squeaks like Styrofoam, life gets a little weird.  You've heard the lore about square tires, exploding trees and liquids freezing in mid-air.  But what's fact and what's fable?  We reveal what really happens when the mercury does its downward slide.

Ears break off:

Polar adventure types will be happy to know that no matter how cold your ears get, no matter how frozen in a sheath of their own sweat, they will never snap like dry spaghetti.  According to Canadian Forces cold-weather researcher Dr. Michel Ducharme, deeply frozen tissues and cells are kept intact by lipid-laden membranes.  (Frostbitten ears may turn black and decay, but won't fall off) Verdict: Hot air

Breath Freezes:

Speaking of Snag, on that improbably cold day six decades ago, it wasn't just the transmission of sound that became a little strange.  Any moisture in the air froze immediately, with a tinkling noise Siberians call "The Whispering of the stars".

Gordon Toole, now retired in Watson Lake, Yukon, recalls seeing faint, elongated trails of vapour following bundled heads as people walked between the Snag barracks and airport.  In the still, supercooled air, the breath stayed put, "lingering for several minutes."  Toole said, such that you could double back and re-trace your own exhalations.  Verdict: Cold Fact

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