by Ruth Griffiths
Canadians love to talk about the cold weather. But how much do we know about it? Challenge yourself and your friends to answer these cold weather questions. 1. How cold can it get in Prince Albert? 2. On average, when is Prince Albert’s coldest day of the year? 3. On what day did Prince Albert record its largest daily snowfall? 4. The lowest recorded temperature in the world was recorded in Antarctica on Aug. 20, 2010. How low did it go? 5. According to Statistics Canada, the coldest recorded temperature in Canada was on Feb. 3, 1947 in Snag, Yukon. How cold was it? 6. Canada is the second coldest country in the world, with an average year round temperature of -3.6 C. What country is colder? 7. The average nighttime low in Canada for December, January and February is -26.7 C. What area of Canada is the coldest? 8. What is the coldest inhabited place on earth? 9. How cold was the last Ice Age? 10. How cold can it get? ANSWERS 1. The Weather Network says -50 C on Jan. 20, 1943 while Wikipedia says -56.7C on Feb. 1, 1893. (Highest temp June 5, 1988 38.8C ) 2. Jan. 10, with an average low of -23°C and high of -12°C. 3. Sunday, Oct. 11, 1998 saw 43 cm of snowfall. The Thanksgiving weekend storm surprised many travellers. 4. -93.2 C (Unofficially, because it was measured by satellite.) 5. -63 C . 6. Russia has the honour of first place at -5.3 C. 7. Nunavut is the coldest territory in the winter, with an average daily temperature of -33.4 C, while Manitoba is the coldest winter province at -25.1 C. Nova Scotia is the warmest province, with a balmy average of -8.9 C. 8. Oymyakon in northeast Russia recorded -67.7 C on Feb. 6, 1933. This is the lowest temperature ever recorded in the northern hemisphere, and is the lowest temperature ever recorded for any permanently inhabited location on Earth. 9. The average global temperature was 6 or 7 degrees colder than today’s average global temperature of 14 C. 10. The moon gets to -228 C. Mars is -153C at the poles. The International Space Station’s sun-facing side heats to 121 C, while the dark side plunges to -157 C. Deep space is -270C. Absolute zero, theoretically the coldest temperature possible, is -273.15C. I guess it’s not so cold here after all.
