New York City is in the midst of a devastating heat wave. Whether there’s even such thing as a “heat wave” anymore or whether the balmy summers of yore have just been replaced with months of glistening, scalding hell every year remains to be seen. What isn’t up for debate is that I’m not built for this. I’m of Irish stock, a genetic makeup designed to sit near a windy cliff or a bog. I’m supposed to be wandering through the fog on the moors with an old-timey lantern, not sweating so hard I have to check that I’m not bleeding.
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And so, as equal parts article and hopeful form of astral projection, I wanted to know how heavily the needle can swing the other way. Far from the pavement that feels like it would make your spit hiss, what’s the lowest we’ve ever seen the mercury drop?
To be honest, and to betray my own stupidity, I wasn’t sure that cold didn’t have a little more of a floor than heat. After all, more cosmic rays, more heat, ad infinitum. On the other hand, once a place is dark, it’s dark, right? Is there room for somewhere to become infinitely more chilly?
Luckily for this article, but unluckily for my image of my own intelligence, yes, it can get really, really cold. As for where it happens, you can probably guess at that. No trick answer here, where, wouldn’t you know, it was actually Boston Harbor during some sort of deeply fucked-up polar vortex. It is, indeed, the King of Cold, Antarctica. More specifically, in a research station in Antarctica known as Vostok. It was recorded on July 21, 1983, a temperature so low that God himself couldn’t create a hat furry enough to save these poor Russians’ ears.
The temperature in question? Negative 128.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or negative 89.2 degrees Celsius for you metric nerds. That’s over a third of the way to liquid nitrogen (negative 320 degrees Fahrenheit).
Interestingly, the coldest temperature ever recorded is roughly the same distance from zero in Fahrenheit as the hottest temperature ever recorded, which was 134 degrees Fahrenheit. Was this planned? Did we just happen to stick zero in an incredibly pleasing place?
That’s a question for the kind of scientist who refuses to return my emails.