COURTESY OF BILL ROMERHAUS
Bill Romerhaus remembers a January morning here in Laniakea Beach, when the temperature was 47 degrees Fahrenheit.
It’s the time of year when the temperature in Hawaii drops into the 50s and 60s and it was “freezing” last night.
Of course, I can never tell my friends on the mainland about how cold it is in Hawaii because they think I’m just a lightweight (they’re right). “It’s 20 F here,” they say!
Unheated swimming pool
Several friends and I went to Mammoth Lakes, California, in 1972. It was winter and there was snow on the floor, but the apartment had a giant hot tub next to a pool.
Some of my friends would get out of the hot tub at a hundred degrees, jump into the unheated pool, which was probably 50 degrees cooler, and then run back screaming into the hot tub. I thought they were crazy. But on the last day I decided to give it a try.
I jumped into the pool and I don’t think I moved a single muscle until my momentum brought me back to the surface. I felt like each and every one of the mobiles in my frame sent an SOS to my brain asking me: What’s going on?
I ran out of the pool and back into the big, warm hot tub. That was more than 50 years ago and I have no preference to repeat that experience.
I asked readers if they had anything about the cold. Here are some of their
Hung up
Barbara Dittrich said, “One frosty, cold winter day in Hawaii, many years ago, I called my sister, who lives in New Jersey.
“I kept talking about the sweater, long pants and socks I wore and I was still shivering in the freezing weather. That was in the ’60s.
“She didn’t feel any sympathy for me,” Dittrich said, “and hung up!”
47 degrees
North Shore photographer Bill Romerhaus said: “Here’s a weather story that would possibly be hard to believe. In the early 1970s, I was living on a beach space in Laniakea, on the north shore of Oahu.
“One of the coldest days I could have was January. I was dropped off about an hour before dawn to check the waves and went down to shore with an ultra-accurate darkroom thermometer. It measured 47 degrees Fahrenheit.
“I also go to Leilehua Middle School in Wahiawa, and some mornings while waiting for the school bus, you could see him breathing and it looked like there was frost on the ground. “
Cold in Kula
Michael Lilly said, “The temperature dropped to 41 F this winter here in Kula, and the maximum temperature is only 63, which is still quite cold.
“The coldest cold we’ve ever had in our house at 3600 feet elevation 37 F was when we had frost on the slopes of our garden. When we walked on the grass, it wrinkled because of the ice crystals.
“But that pales in comparison to the space my mother-in-law had a week ago in Iowa, where it was -23 F in the icy wind. “
Parking the car
“I moved to Chicago in 1963,” Tony Saifuku told me, “and I shared an apartment on the north side with a friend who owned a ’53 Ford. When it rains and the temperature drops rapidly, all rainy surfaces are covered with ice. Buildings, roads, sidewalks, trees, everything is covered in slippery ice.
“During one of those ice storms we were driving around looking for a place to park after work, and the only one was too narrow to be able to park properly at the window. It was late, we were cold, and we were tired of driving around looking for a big enough place to park, so we took what we found.
“We covered the Ford between the two cars and pushed it. We slid the Ford onto the sidewalk with little effort and a few inches to spare between the bumpers of the two parked cars, and climbed the stairs to protect ourselves from the cold.
“With the crown (high point) in the center of the road, we would not have been able to push the car away from the curb to the center of the road. Fortunately, the next morning one of the cars was gone, and we were able to get out without a problem.”
Muh frozen face!
Peggy Aurand said, “When we lived in Beijing, Illinois, in the 1970s and 1980s, we had a solid 30- to 100-foot pole with 17 horses on it. Our water pipe was buried five and a half feet deep.
“One year, for the entire month of January, temperatures did not rise above freezing. The frost line has dropped six feet! Our water line to the barn froze, and on days when the temperature It was -20 F, a five gallon bucket of water was being carried in. The space completely froze before I could get it to the barn!
“The horses had ice cubes on their nose whiskers. Everyone was covered with blankets. I had to put hot water in the buckets to give the horses time to drink!That’s 170 gallons transported per day from the tub at the back of the space. to the barn. In weight, it weighs more than 1,300 pounds.
“When the 17 horses pooped, they froze before they hit the ground!The “apples of the road” resounded when I raked them!
“The phone rang in the tool room. It was my parents and my bed in Honolulu. “Aloha!” they sang happily.
“I answered, ‘Uh-woh-huh t’ yoo, too.’
“They asked, ‘What’s the matter with your voice?’
“‘My face is frozen!’ I answered. “
Snowed. . . in August
Ken Goldstein told a story about cold weather. My wife and I grew up in Phoenix and work through the US Department of Energy in Laramie, Wyoming.
“Going from 1,000 to 7,200 feet was exhausting at first, but we were young in the late 1970s.
“The real surprise is the snow in August! Arizona was still 100 years away, and we were still 20 years away from being ready. What we thought were warm jackets were useless, let alone our shoes.
“Linda and I were embarrassed that our bosses had bet on when the ‘desert rats’ would arrive. We were poorly dressed!
“We also discovered that our trusty diesel VW was almost impossible to start, and although the town is small enough to walk around, we bought a 1954 Chevy pickup that we drove everywhere for the next three years.
“When my 10-year-old came here for Christmas, I had to borrow my neighbor’s snowmobile to pick him up at the airport, thanks to the almost 3 feet of snow that fell!
“The track has been cleared, but the roads were still clear of snow at this early hour. He and I drank a big tub of hot chocolate on the way home!
“It was hard to realize that the cold could be deadly. We had temperatures around -40 degrees, with strong mountain winds causing the wind chill to drop below -60 degrees.
“There were mandatory monthly briefings on how to deal with frostbite, the proper way to dress in layers, and other cold weather topics, which were eye-opening for all of us.
“We enjoyed hunting and fishing, and the beautiful scenery, but we were satisfied when our next project was done in a much warmer place: New Orleans!”
Machu Picchu
John McCarthy commented, “In my college days a buddy and I traveled to Peru, flying into the Andes to see Machu Picchu and other fabulous relics of the Inca empire. One night we attended a meeting until 9 or 10 at night.
“As we walked out of that cozy room in the frigid darkness 10,000 feet above sea level, I felt the coldest cold I’ve ever experienced. At the same time, I looked up and saw how many stars there are, when you’re far away. of the lights of the people.
“I was stunned by both the clarity and the good looks of the sky. I hope to see all those stars again.
Readers: What’s your climate story?
Bob Sigall is the author of five books, “The Companies We Keep. “Contact him at Sigall@Yahoo. com or sign up for his free email newsletter on RearviewMirrorInsider. com.
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