Hottest and coldest temperatures you experienced

[Oddball]

Here are my records:

Hottest: 170 degrees F (77 degrees C) in a sauna. The first few minutes were quite relaxing, but I stepped out when breathing started to become harder.
Coldest: -2 degrees F (-19 degrees C) on a cloudless January night. I spent about a minute and a half outside, but I forgot to cover my ears and almost got frostbite in that area.

FYI, the difference between the two temperatures is nearly equal to the difference between the boiling and freezing points of water.

Anyone else interested in sharing their experiences?

[mdettweiler]

Hottest for me would probably be somewhere near yours--whatever your average hotel sauna is.

Coldest...that would probably be somewhere in the vicinity of -10 F, IIRC. I'm in Western NY, so it's not too uncommon for it to get that low in the dead of winter at night. It probably dips down colder at some point ever year, but I'm not generally out in it when it does.

[xilman]

Originally Posted by mdettweiler

Hottest for me would probably be somewhere near yours--whatever your average hotel sauna is.

Coldest...that would probably be somewhere in the vicinity of -10 F, IIRC. I'm in Western NY, so it's not too uncommon for it to get that low in the dead of winter at night. It probably dips down colder at some point ever year, but I'm not generally out in it when it does.

I've spent a 10-minute session in a sauna at 113C (*). I'm rather unusual in the UK in that I spend a lot of time in saunas. Roughly speaking, just over 1% of my life is spent at temperatures over 90C.

Coldest out of doors is -24C one morning in Oxford when we had a very unusually severe cold snap. The coldest any significant part of my anatomy has endured is 77K, or -196C. That's during the standard party tricks which grad students show off to newbie undergrads --- plunging your hand and forearm into a bucket of liquid nitrogen for a few seconds.

Paul

(*) The sauna in the Comsa hotel in Brno has a miscalibrated thermometer. It claims 65C but the temperature inside the sauna is certainly well over 100C but I can't say for sure how much over. It feels like 110C or so and I can rarely stay in there for longer than 8-10 minutes.

[rajula]

I don't know if you should count me as I have lived most of my life in Finland.

I have been in very hot and dry saunas many times, but I can't say what the temperature has been... For me, the optimal temperature in sauna is definately below 100°C.

For the other end, I know that in the winter time I have been outside in roughly -40°C, which is already really cold in Finnish standards. (In Lapland the temperature rarely goes below -50°C, but I would guess someone from say Russia has experienced even colder conditions.)

[retina]

On the hot side I have experienced 250C+. But this is nothing special, it happens each time I put my arm into the oven to remove what is cooking. As long as the air is dry then skin can cope for a few seconds at even higher temperatures with no problem, but touch the metal grill or tray and you'll be sorry.

[rajula]

Originally Posted by retina

On the hot side I have experienced 250C+. But this is nothing special, it happens each time I put my arm into the oven to remove what is cooking. --

Too bad I never had an accident while welding (in elementary school). Otherwise I could easily beat that record of relatively local high temperature. ('Relatively local' because otherwise someone would go into the really small scales and claim ridiculous temperatures..)

[Xyzzy]

We flew from Somalia to Boston in early January once. The temperature difference really messed us up. We have no temperature numbers but we remember it started out very hot and ended up very cold.

[Uncwilly]

Originally Posted by retina

On the hot side I have experienced 250C+. But this is nothing special, it happens each time I put my arm into the oven to remove what is cooking. As long as the air is dry then skin can cope for a few seconds at even higher temperatures with no problem, but touch the metal grill or tray and you'll be sorry.

I have both placed material into and removed material from a 550 C furnace barehanded. The materials were very thin Al weighing dishes. The thermal mass was low and they were bent to form corners. As a child, I spent a couple of minutes (with out a coat) in the walk-in deep freeze, in the back end of a supermarket. If memory serves it was ~ -20 C, it may have been lower.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by Oddball

Here are my records:

[...]
Coldest: -2 degrees F (-19 degrees C) on a cloudless January night. I spent about a minute and a half outside, but I forgot to cover my ears and almost got frostbite in that area. [...]
Anyone else interested in sharing their experiences?

No one as yet has mentioned how it feels to breathe at these temperatures. I am a Southern California guy so it was quite a novel experience for me to be in temperatures like this in rural Pennsylvania, USA. First, inhaling the air invokes a feeling of pain in the lungs. I was very noobish about coping so I got to experience a welter of other sensations. There is a big difference between bearded and non-bearded skin comfort. Frozen stuff clings to the feet beyond ordinary expectation as I discovered in a bank after getting some money and turning around to leave and seeing a hideous trail of mud across the marble floor (I 'd shaken off my shoes but this was apparently inadequate). Car-less, I used to walk 3 miles or so to get to a mall so I could attempt to relax in an ersatz semblance of my Southern California mall comfort zone. I spent a miserable year or so sleeping under a tech bench on a project at this location. Fingers and ears must not be left exposed. Breathing was much more comfortable through some kind of ski mask because expelled breath seemed to help warm the next inhalation but moisture build up was a problem.

Originally Posted by rajula

I don't know if you should count me as I have lived most of my life in Finland.

I have been in very hot and dry saunas many times, but I can't say what the temperature has been... For me, the optimal temperature in sauna is definately below 100°C.

For the other end, I know that in the winter time I have been outside in roughly -40°C, which is already really cold in Finnish standards. (In Lapland the temperature rarely goes below -50°C, but I would guess someone from say Russia has experienced even colder conditions.)

Ah, a bit of banter among some American techies is to leave off the Celsius or Fahrenheit symbol when discussing -40° and hope the other party asks which scale applies.

[rajula]

Originally Posted by only_human

Ah, a bit of banter among some American techies is to leave off the Celsius or Fahrenheit symbol when discussing -40° and hope the other party asks which scale applies.

But asking for the scale makes sense, since putting just ° to denote temperature leaves at least six used temperature units (although not all of them go below 0). So, being clever would turn against you.

[only_human]

Originally Posted by rajula

But asking for the scale makes sense, since putting just ° to denote temperature leaves at least six used temperature units (although not all of them go below 0). So, being clever would turn against you.

That's why it's good banter. Good banter in my opinion doesn't just make the other person feel silly or stupid but rather leaves open a few opportunities to be stung back if the person is particularly sharp and wants to play ball.