Here’s my semi-known hack: smear a thin layer of Vaseline on your face, which should be your only marginally exposed skin. The Vaseline keeps the moisture in your skin, and protects it from windchill.
I lived in South Minneapolis for sixteen years, and ran year-round. As long as I had a good base layer, wind pants and jacket, hat, mitts (not gloves) and Vaseline on my face, I could run miles and miles without discomfort. The key is to keep moving but avoid breaking a sweat— after awhile the moving keeps you just warm enough. I would start a run with a bandana on my face but it would ice over as I got warm, and after I pulled it down the Vaseline kept my skin alive even in -70 windchills.
Thank you for a reason to remember those years for a happy reason. Enjoy your shiny greasy Vaseline faces!
Unfortunately, won't work if you sweat even in sub-freezing weather. And, yes, some of us do. So grateful when wicking underwear and liner socks were invented.
I wish I could be there. My old church, Park Avenue Methodist, is two blocks from where ICE murdered Renee Good— and five blocks in a different direction from where George Floyd was murdered by local cops. It is a vibrant neighborhood with a lot of challenges and a lot of love— and I’m not surprised at the response of the neighborhood to (once again) being the center of undeserved violence. South Minneapolis is where I learned that being a Christian and a liberal is no contradiction in terms, not by a long shot.
I wish I could be there, but I would be a liability on the ice any more. But thank you for the kind thought!
Here in Massachusetts, the weather rarely turns out as bad as predicted. For nearly fifty years, the "Storm Centers" on local newz shows, formerly "the weather report," have been trying to goose every snowstorm into another Blizzard of '78. It keeps people fearful and tuned in, I suppose.
After the storm reporting is over, they say "No one will ever forget the blizzard of '92; or the blizzard of '05; and so on, after every quickly-forgotten snowstorm. More than once their predictions of calamitous storms convinced the mayor to close down Boston in advance, and then there wasn't a flake of snow or a drop of rain to justify it.
This time we're supposed to get 18 to 23 inches of snow where I live. Maybe, maybe not. I have gas in the snowblower and my picnic cooler at the ready.
After two or three preemptively cancelled school days the past couple of years, when there was nary a flake anywhere, my kid's school this weekend is observing radio silence. I think the headmaster is literally waiting until 5 am on Monday to see if it is actually snowing outside his window this time.
I like it. I worked for us back in the 60s, and it still makes sense to wait and see if it snows before canceling everything. Besides, why deprive kids of the thrill of finding out at the last minute that school is canceled due to snow. Yay!
In the Massachusetts town where I grew up, snow days were announced by the fire station horns blowing the morning of. It was great. Long before robo-calls, texts, or emails. We'd all wake up early to listen for the fire horns, and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours.
Waiting for the fire station horn sounds perfect—for a child, almost like being on the lookout for white smoke at the Sistine Chapel.
In Rhode Island, we had a beloved local TV and radio personality named Salty Brine, and he did the no school announcements on the radio. The same two or three schools would ALWAYS close even for the lightest snow, but for the rest of us, even a foot of snow was no guarantee. If the roads were clean, it could go either way. We waited eagerly as Salty made his way through the long alphabetical list of school names.
As a fellow Rhode Islander, I remember Salty fondly (I still frequent Salty Brine Beach in the summer). As a child, when I woke up to the sound of tire chains on a snow-packed road, I knew there was going to be no school that day.
Ah yes, good ol’ Salty Brine. "No school Fostah-Glostah" is burned into my mind. They always got snow days off. Along with Little Red Hen Preschool & Kindergarten.
I remember listening to WHDH as they would go through the list of towns that were closed and as soon as they said Canton, it was back under the covers.
I remember very few snow days in Bethesda (though I do remember listening to the radio for the announcements). We do have photos (and perhaps even home movies) of the year we got 18" (sometime between 1956 and 1962), but that was very rare. And I don't remember ever being cold, as children never seem to be much affected by temperature, though I do remember going through multiple handkerchiefs and tissues at school all winter with colds. I spent my young adult years in Atlanta, which rarely gets snow, but we did have a memorable ice storm when the power was out for several days, and it got quite arctic in our apartment.
Probably. My husband would remember. I know it was between 1967, when we married, and 1975, when we moved to a house. My husband had given me a pet squirrel monkey for Christmas of 1967 (went to a pet store for something else and was hooked) and we huddled under the covers with The Little Dude until the power came back on. As a tropical creature, he was really hard hit!
Well, it’s kinda nice to have something else to think about than our country circling the drain. None of us could match Gene’s Alaska story…
But many years ago I had the bright idea of taking my Girl Scout troop winter camping in northern Michigan. We did have a roughy cabin, it got very cold -30s I recall. We lost power and my car doors froze shut. I thought I was going to well…lose the kids to hypothermia. But fortunately I was able to boil water on the gas stove and get my car doors open. We got the hell out of there! Fun times.
My Eagle Scout brothers vividly recall a campout one winter with a Scoutmaster who didn't believe in pampering his charges. They were tenting on the snowy banks of the Potomac when a storm came up during the night and blew their tents into the river. They were drenched and VERY cold.
In December 1967, my husband and I were about halfway through our "Grand Tour" of Europe. We knew we had left it a bit late weatherwise, but set off from London to Dover at night on our 250Cc BSA motorbike. I'm not sure what the temperature was but it was so cold that when we got to the pier at Dover I was convulsively shivering and dry heaving. After getting me stabilized with hot tea, the Customs Inspectors gave me one of their long navy blue wool overcoats. It was wonderful of them to have taken pity on someone so young, foolish, and ignorant about European winter weather.
So, here I was, a California boy on a 9-month ministry internship in Grinnell, Iowa. I wake up one January Sunday morning and the temperature is -20. But the windchill is -65! Did my supervisor cancel church? No! I walked the two blocks from my apartment. Attendance? The supervising pastor, me, the organist, the pastor’s wife and three parishioners. (However, one of the three was an 80-ish woman who walked a half mile from the retirement community to attend. Those Iowans are tough!)
I live in Florida. Weather predictions are always worst-case scenario which means that people always drop their expectations of what will really happen down several, sometimes many, notches because most of the time, the reality is nowhere near what was predicted. Then, the Tampa Bay region, unhit by much hurricane related since 1928, got a two punch with Helene and Milton in 2025. It was every bit as bad as predicted, and in some places, worse. I had an elderly friend who, with her daughter, had to evacuate on foot when the water started rising inside her condo. It took almost a year before she could go home, as the interior, along with everyone else's on the first floor of her building, was totally destroyed.
So, based on history, what is predicted is worst case and it probably won't be that bad. However, the reason why the weather service does worst case is because sometimes that is what actually happens and they want people to prepare.
So, prepare for the very worst and feel okay if you even ramp it up a bit. It probably won't be that bad, but just in case the predictions are correct, you'll be all right. Just don't say--nah, it won't be that bad. It probably won't be that bad but just in case, you will want to be prepared.
(My sister lost her car in Helene. She is in a second floor apartment and her car, parked outside the building had water over the hood. All the first floor apartments in her building were destroyed. She never thought it would flood enough to kill her super reliable, not very young but still looked good, super reliable, super reliable Toyota Corolla.)
This is not a funny response and I apologize. But those hurricanes really taught us Florida folks in the Tampa Bay region a lesson. We had gotten to the point that our hurricane prep was potato chips, bourbon and a hurricane cake from Publix. Only newbies bought water and batteries.
Gene, Gene, Gene, As a kid, I shoveled snow in Buffalo NY to earn money for college. One winter I froze my ass off. Unfortunately by spring it grew back. That's why I went to college in Miami.
One winter in Montana, the temperature didn't get above zero for a month....it was hovering at 15 below. One Saturday morning, it had warmed up to 8! so my brother and I went for a jog. I wore two scarfs, one around my neck, one covering my face, a hat, a wool shirt, a down vest and running tights, and mittens; my brother wore cotton jeans, a t-shirt, a hat and mittens. At the end of eight miles, I looked like a running yard sale, having stripped down to the hat, tights and mittens. I remember removing one mitten halfway through the run and seeing my hand steaming. On all other jogs, I wore fewer clothes, as long as it was above zero.
I spent a winter years ago in an Ontario Provincial Park; we had electricity but no running water. Every morning we had to chop a hole in the ice to haul water up from the lake in -40F temps. And of course we had to use an outhouse. Needless to say: that romance did not last.
Coldest was Korea in the winter of 85/86. One of the duties on the roster was to start every vehicle in the motor pool every 2 hours to keep the oil and coolant warm.
I’m writing from Central Wisconsin where the temperature is -15. Not wind chill. That’s the real temperature. We get several days like this a year. So, while we’re not doing much today, lots of people go about their day, running from building to car and car to building.
'Course there's a good deal more than air temperature to feeling cold --- like humidity. Can't win with humidity. Low humidity speeds up evaporation from the skin and respiratory system making us feel even colder, while high can also make us feel colder because moisture in the air reduces clothing insulating properties, allowing more heat to escape. Just to make make sure sitting by the fire and enjoying the fruits of your paid subscription to The Gene Pool is your best option, there's also a bunch of psychological factors in feeling cold to go along with the obvious physical ones. Or you can go with the Army Extended Cold Weather Clothing System (ECWCS) seven layer system while now less bulky and lighter than previous iterations, still tends to give you a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man profile. And yes, since you asked, there are specific techniques --- more like highly choreographed routines --- for answering the call of nature, when she's giving you her icy middle finger.
The psychological factors can indeed influence how cold you feel. After all, feeling cold is a survival instinct and if you know that you will not be in the cold long enough to be in danger, your mind can shut off the sensation. When I was in school in New Hampshire and it was hovering around zero, we often didn’t bother with jackets when walking a few minutes to another house party. We also had alcohol in our blood.
Cold is cold. Not funny, not to me. Coldest weather I have ever experienced was 20 below zero, in Michigan in the 70s, when men were men and weather was cold. ColdER, I should say. No skin could go uncovered and even with a ski mask, it hurt to breathe.
"I don’t want to shovel."
C'mon, Gene, you shovel it all the time.
True. Thank you.
Here’s my semi-known hack: smear a thin layer of Vaseline on your face, which should be your only marginally exposed skin. The Vaseline keeps the moisture in your skin, and protects it from windchill.
I lived in South Minneapolis for sixteen years, and ran year-round. As long as I had a good base layer, wind pants and jacket, hat, mitts (not gloves) and Vaseline on my face, I could run miles and miles without discomfort. The key is to keep moving but avoid breaking a sweat— after awhile the moving keeps you just warm enough. I would start a run with a bandana on my face but it would ice over as I got warm, and after I pulled it down the Vaseline kept my skin alive even in -70 windchills.
Thank you for a reason to remember those years for a happy reason. Enjoy your shiny greasy Vaseline faces!
We used to use Bag Balm mixed with zinc oxide while skiing in New Hampshire.
This is a very interesting (and previously unknown, to me) hack. A question I never thought I might be asking: how does one remove Vaseline?
Some of it gets absorbed and a warm washcloth takes care of the rest. It is great for cold weather long runs.
Live and learn. Thanks Paula!
Unfortunately, won't work if you sweat even in sub-freezing weather. And, yes, some of us do. So grateful when wicking underwear and liner socks were invented.
I'm glad you don't still live in Minneapolis. Wouldn't want to have to worry about you, too!
I wish I could be there. My old church, Park Avenue Methodist, is two blocks from where ICE murdered Renee Good— and five blocks in a different direction from where George Floyd was murdered by local cops. It is a vibrant neighborhood with a lot of challenges and a lot of love— and I’m not surprised at the response of the neighborhood to (once again) being the center of undeserved violence. South Minneapolis is where I learned that being a Christian and a liberal is no contradiction in terms, not by a long shot.
I wish I could be there, but I would be a liability on the ice any more. But thank you for the kind thought!
Just back from Harris Teeter, appears to me that no one panic buys fish. Chicken is gone though.
Also all the jugs of water and all the half and half but not the milk. Must be the aging population.
Hi Steve!
Hi Maja!
Hi Steve and Maja!
Coldest time: Navy ship going from Halifax to Liverpool
- in January
- north of Iceland.
In 1973 just so we could see if we could still do it like in 1943.
Yep. North of the Arctic Circle, '73.
What ship? Mine was Severn AO-61.
Here in Massachusetts, the weather rarely turns out as bad as predicted. For nearly fifty years, the "Storm Centers" on local newz shows, formerly "the weather report," have been trying to goose every snowstorm into another Blizzard of '78. It keeps people fearful and tuned in, I suppose.
After the storm reporting is over, they say "No one will ever forget the blizzard of '92; or the blizzard of '05; and so on, after every quickly-forgotten snowstorm. More than once their predictions of calamitous storms convinced the mayor to close down Boston in advance, and then there wasn't a flake of snow or a drop of rain to justify it.
This time we're supposed to get 18 to 23 inches of snow where I live. Maybe, maybe not. I have gas in the snowblower and my picnic cooler at the ready.
After two or three preemptively cancelled school days the past couple of years, when there was nary a flake anywhere, my kid's school this weekend is observing radio silence. I think the headmaster is literally waiting until 5 am on Monday to see if it is actually snowing outside his window this time.
I like it. I worked for us back in the 60s, and it still makes sense to wait and see if it snows before canceling everything. Besides, why deprive kids of the thrill of finding out at the last minute that school is canceled due to snow. Yay!
In the Massachusetts town where I grew up, snow days were announced by the fire station horns blowing the morning of. It was great. Long before robo-calls, texts, or emails. We'd all wake up early to listen for the fire horns, and then go back to sleep for a couple of hours.
Waiting for the fire station horn sounds perfect—for a child, almost like being on the lookout for white smoke at the Sistine Chapel.
In Rhode Island, we had a beloved local TV and radio personality named Salty Brine, and he did the no school announcements on the radio. The same two or three schools would ALWAYS close even for the lightest snow, but for the rest of us, even a foot of snow was no guarantee. If the roads were clean, it could go either way. We waited eagerly as Salty made his way through the long alphabetical list of school names.
As a fellow Rhode Islander, I remember Salty fondly (I still frequent Salty Brine Beach in the summer). As a child, when I woke up to the sound of tire chains on a snow-packed road, I knew there was going to be no school that day.
Ah yes, good ol’ Salty Brine. "No school Fostah-Glostah" is burned into my mind. They always got snow days off. Along with Little Red Hen Preschool & Kindergarten.
Sounds like he was a character!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salty_Brine
I remember listening to WHDH as they would go through the list of towns that were closed and as soon as they said Canton, it was back under the covers.
I remember very few snow days in Bethesda (though I do remember listening to the radio for the announcements). We do have photos (and perhaps even home movies) of the year we got 18" (sometime between 1956 and 1962), but that was very rare. And I don't remember ever being cold, as children never seem to be much affected by temperature, though I do remember going through multiple handkerchiefs and tissues at school all winter with colds. I spent my young adult years in Atlanta, which rarely gets snow, but we did have a memorable ice storm when the power was out for several days, and it got quite arctic in our apartment.
Atlanta Ice Storm Winter of 1969???
Probably. My husband would remember. I know it was between 1967, when we married, and 1975, when we moved to a house. My husband had given me a pet squirrel monkey for Christmas of 1967 (went to a pet store for something else and was hooked) and we huddled under the covers with The Little Dude until the power came back on. As a tropical creature, he was really hard hit!
That's an awesome story! The world needs more squirrel monkey stories!
Agree. It's never as bad as they say it's going to be.
Well, it’s kinda nice to have something else to think about than our country circling the drain. None of us could match Gene’s Alaska story…
But many years ago I had the bright idea of taking my Girl Scout troop winter camping in northern Michigan. We did have a roughy cabin, it got very cold -30s I recall. We lost power and my car doors froze shut. I thought I was going to well…lose the kids to hypothermia. But fortunately I was able to boil water on the gas stove and get my car doors open. We got the hell out of there! Fun times.
My Eagle Scout brothers vividly recall a campout one winter with a Scoutmaster who didn't believe in pampering his charges. They were tenting on the snowy banks of the Potomac when a storm came up during the night and blew their tents into the river. They were drenched and VERY cold.
If I recall correctly, that is the trip where he bought the walrus penis bone.
Gene? Confirm or deny?
In December 1967, my husband and I were about halfway through our "Grand Tour" of Europe. We knew we had left it a bit late weatherwise, but set off from London to Dover at night on our 250Cc BSA motorbike. I'm not sure what the temperature was but it was so cold that when we got to the pier at Dover I was convulsively shivering and dry heaving. After getting me stabilized with hot tea, the Customs Inspectors gave me one of their long navy blue wool overcoats. It was wonderful of them to have taken pity on someone so young, foolish, and ignorant about European winter weather.
So, here I was, a California boy on a 9-month ministry internship in Grinnell, Iowa. I wake up one January Sunday morning and the temperature is -20. But the windchill is -65! Did my supervisor cancel church? No! I walked the two blocks from my apartment. Attendance? The supervising pastor, me, the organist, the pastor’s wife and three parishioners. (However, one of the three was an 80-ish woman who walked a half mile from the retirement community to attend. Those Iowans are tough!)
I live in Florida. Weather predictions are always worst-case scenario which means that people always drop their expectations of what will really happen down several, sometimes many, notches because most of the time, the reality is nowhere near what was predicted. Then, the Tampa Bay region, unhit by much hurricane related since 1928, got a two punch with Helene and Milton in 2025. It was every bit as bad as predicted, and in some places, worse. I had an elderly friend who, with her daughter, had to evacuate on foot when the water started rising inside her condo. It took almost a year before she could go home, as the interior, along with everyone else's on the first floor of her building, was totally destroyed.
So, based on history, what is predicted is worst case and it probably won't be that bad. However, the reason why the weather service does worst case is because sometimes that is what actually happens and they want people to prepare.
So, prepare for the very worst and feel okay if you even ramp it up a bit. It probably won't be that bad, but just in case the predictions are correct, you'll be all right. Just don't say--nah, it won't be that bad. It probably won't be that bad but just in case, you will want to be prepared.
(My sister lost her car in Helene. She is in a second floor apartment and her car, parked outside the building had water over the hood. All the first floor apartments in her building were destroyed. She never thought it would flood enough to kill her super reliable, not very young but still looked good, super reliable, super reliable Toyota Corolla.)
This is not a funny response and I apologize. But those hurricanes really taught us Florida folks in the Tampa Bay region a lesson. We had gotten to the point that our hurricane prep was potato chips, bourbon and a hurricane cake from Publix. Only newbies bought water and batteries.
Prepare for the worst is a sensible plan every time. Chips, bourbon and cake will be good anytime.
Andrew, in '92 Miami, reminded me bigly. Lucky me retired to SC hill country trying to avoid such, just to get 'Helened' in '24.
Gene, Gene, Gene, As a kid, I shoveled snow in Buffalo NY to earn money for college. One winter I froze my ass off. Unfortunately by spring it grew back. That's why I went to college in Miami.
One winter in Montana, the temperature didn't get above zero for a month....it was hovering at 15 below. One Saturday morning, it had warmed up to 8! so my brother and I went for a jog. I wore two scarfs, one around my neck, one covering my face, a hat, a wool shirt, a down vest and running tights, and mittens; my brother wore cotton jeans, a t-shirt, a hat and mittens. At the end of eight miles, I looked like a running yard sale, having stripped down to the hat, tights and mittens. I remember removing one mitten halfway through the run and seeing my hand steaming. On all other jogs, I wore fewer clothes, as long as it was above zero.
"I looked like a running yard sale": LOL. Perfect image.
I spent a winter years ago in an Ontario Provincial Park; we had electricity but no running water. Every morning we had to chop a hole in the ice to haul water up from the lake in -40F temps. And of course we had to use an outhouse. Needless to say: that romance did not last.
Coldest was Korea in the winter of 85/86. One of the duties on the roster was to start every vehicle in the motor pool every 2 hours to keep the oil and coolant warm.
Hottest was August in the Mojave desert.
Were you 2ID or 1st Sig Bde?
HHC 2Bde 2ID on Camp Hovey.
I’m writing from Central Wisconsin where the temperature is -15. Not wind chill. That’s the real temperature. We get several days like this a year. So, while we’re not doing much today, lots of people go about their day, running from building to car and car to building.
'Course there's a good deal more than air temperature to feeling cold --- like humidity. Can't win with humidity. Low humidity speeds up evaporation from the skin and respiratory system making us feel even colder, while high can also make us feel colder because moisture in the air reduces clothing insulating properties, allowing more heat to escape. Just to make make sure sitting by the fire and enjoying the fruits of your paid subscription to The Gene Pool is your best option, there's also a bunch of psychological factors in feeling cold to go along with the obvious physical ones. Or you can go with the Army Extended Cold Weather Clothing System (ECWCS) seven layer system while now less bulky and lighter than previous iterations, still tends to give you a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man profile. And yes, since you asked, there are specific techniques --- more like highly choreographed routines --- for answering the call of nature, when she's giving you her icy middle finger.
The psychological factors can indeed influence how cold you feel. After all, feeling cold is a survival instinct and if you know that you will not be in the cold long enough to be in danger, your mind can shut off the sensation. When I was in school in New Hampshire and it was hovering around zero, we often didn’t bother with jackets when walking a few minutes to another house party. We also had alcohol in our blood.
Cold is cold. Not funny, not to me. Coldest weather I have ever experienced was 20 below zero, in Michigan in the 70s, when men were men and weather was cold. ColdER, I should say. No skin could go uncovered and even with a ski mask, it hurt to breathe.
I saw -40F in Northern Wisconsin when I worked outside for the airlines. I never want to see it again.
Yep, had some deeply minus winter days in Wis. Hurt to breathe is correct!