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How likely
are you to get frostbite when it's cold outside?
Growing up in the UK, frostbite was the stuff of fantasy,
something intrepid explorers and fictional adventurers suffered from, not
ordinary people.
And for some reason in my imagination,
it inevitably ended up with body parts being hacked off.
So Michigan winters have come as something of a shock to me.
This was brought home recently while walking the 10
bitterly cold minutes between my car and my office one morning.
As my admittedly uncovered years started to burn,
began to feel my English certainty crumble.
Just how quickly does frostbite set in?
Frostbite occurs when your skin and flesh freeze.
If you left a severed finger lying around, this would happen at temperatures
of just below
32 degrees Fahrenheit, or zero degrees Celsius in grown-up numbers.
Fortunately, body parts that are still attached are warmed by circulating blood,
and as a result don't start to freeze until you get to -10 degrees
Fahrenheit or so.
Even then, you'd need to hang around outside with your extremities exposed for quite
some time before you had a problem.
But if it's cold enough outside and you aren't wrapped up warm,
parts of your body can begin to freeze. This leads to the stuff you are made of
being damaged,
and frostbite sets in. In calm air you need to stand around in temperatures
below minus 10 to minus 20 degrees Fahrenheit for a long time
before frostbite becomes an issue.
When the wind gets up though it's a different story. Wind
doesn't change how cold the air is, but it does alter how fast it can suck
the heat out of you. Once you get below 32 degrees Fahrenheit,
the higher the wind speed the faster you freeze. Its a simple as that.
And this is important if you're worried about frostbite,
as the faster you freeze, the faster frostbite sets in,
and the more severe it's likely to be. According to the US National Weather
Service, at minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit and a
five-mile-per-hour breeze, it'll take around 30 minutes before you need to
worry too much.
Get down to minus 15 degrees and 30 miles per hour winds,
and your uncovered extremities have around 10 minutes before they begin to
solidify.
And by the time you're down to minus 20 degrees in 35 miles per hour winds,
five minutes outside will be enough to turn your ears into
frozen popsicles! Thankfully
my experience walking between the car and the office was just a painful reminder
of how
bitterly cold Michigan can get, and not a prelude to losing an ear or two.
I'd have had to be outside for a good 30 minutes for any serious damage to set in at
those temperatures.
And even then the damage would most likely be reversible.
And there's another myth about frostbite from my childhood
busted. Frostbite doesn't necessarily lead to amputated
body parts. But it is sobering to think that with some of the conditions we've
experienced this winter,
just 10 minutes outside without the right clothing could have
led to some serious
damage. To learn more about frostbite,
check out the links below. And as always, please do join the conversation
in the comments.