How Cold Was It Where You Were?

How cold was it at your house last weekend? The short, intense cold snap had everyone comparing notes and reminiscing about their personal histories of facing down bitter temperatures, a can-you-top-this competition of sorts, familiar to those of us raised where the winters were long and brutal.

The thermometer on our back deck, Saturday morning, February 4.

I grew up in north central Massachusetts, in hilly terrain near the New Hampshire border.  In my youthful world, cold snaps were not a reason to stay inside. We simply dressed for the weather.

I’ve written on this blog before about the bright red rubber boots into which we slid our shod feet, insulated with our older brother’s cast-off wool socks and waterproofed with recycled bread bags. https://mainecrimewriters.com/wp-admin/post-new.php?post_type=post&jetpack-copy=25528

The rest of our winter outerwear was creative as well, out of necessity. Kids tend to grow out of snowsuits before they wear them out. Same with ski pants and parkas. In my family, we had a big swaperoo every fall, when older siblings and cousins passed along whatever insulated clothing didn’t fit them anymore, a boon for the younger siblings and cousins. Our outfits did not always match, but we were warm and dry, whether sledding, skiing or building snow forts.

I wasn’t the only one hiking down memory lane this weekend.

In this week’s Weekly Packet out of Blue Hill, Pat Shepard, a researcher at the Maine Center for Coastal Fisheries, wrote a column that recounted how in 1934, “Hilton Turner’s grandfather walked from Isle au Haut to Stonington 14 times.” Isle au Haut is nearly 6 miles across Penobscot Bay, folks. Darned impressive.

Shepard also reported that “when Tim Emerson was a youngster, he struck out from Oceanville [on the east side of Stonington] on his bicycle (!) for Swan’s Island,” which is a heck of a long pedal across Jericho Bay. “Returning home in a stiff northwest wind was the hard part,” Shepard noted.

I hope Tim had a good hat.

Hiking on frozen bays was a necessary part of life other places as well. Here’s a memorable photo from the archives of the Portland newspapers, showing folks hiking across Casco Bay in 1862.

Credit – Portland Press Herald

Climate change makes such feats remarkable now. Sustained bitter cold is no longer a fact of life in Northern New England, and its relative rarity makes it news. Every meteorological outlet in the country did stories about the conditions atop Mount Washington this past weekend.  Here’s a link to The Weather Channel’s coverage: https://weather.com/news/weather/news/2023-02-02-mount-washington-new-hampshire-extreme-weather-wind-chill

And the Boston Globe featured a story on Saturday by a guy who went skiing at Pat’s Peak in Henniker, New Hampshire when the wind was howling. Here’s a link to his tale: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/04/sports/yes-i-went-skiing-this-cold-heres-how-it-went/

I’ve not checked with my pal Sandy Emerson about whether he was out on the slopes in Franklin County last Friday.  Perhaps he’ll let us know in the comment section, and if he didn’t ski last weekend, perhaps he’ll recount for us his coldest schussing memories.

How about the rest of you?  Do you have a story from this past weekend or one from your childhood about being out in the cold?  I’d be especially keen to hear from Vaughn and Kait, up in the County.

Brenda Buchanan brings years of experience as a journalist and a lawyer to her crime fiction. She has published three books featuring Joe Gale, a newspaper reporter who covers the crime and courts beat. She is now hard at work on new projects. FMI, go to http://brendabuchananwrites.com