You’ve likely never experienced -84°F (~-64.5°C). Maybe you’ve experienced negative temperatures. Maybe you’ve even experienced negative temperatures reaching -40°F or -50°F with wind chill. But most people reading this have probably never experienced -84°F.
How cold is -84°F, you ask? While I haven’t personally ever experienced temperatures that cold in my life, I can tell you that it’s cold enough to freeze a glass of root beer as it’s being poured from the can.
Photographer Jeff Capps spent quite a while in Antarctica, documenting his experiences with life on the south pole on Instagram. Let me tell you, it looks darn cold. And yes, he showed the world that it gets cold enough to freeze a glass of root beer as it’s being poured from the can.
Temperatures Of Antarctica
Obviously we’re all skiers, so most of us can handle the cold fairly well. Go stick your hand in your freezer, though. See how cold that feels. It’s typically recommended that those sit right at or below 0°F. It’s pretty darn cold, and I imagine, if you left your hand in there for quite a while, you’d get fairly uncomfortable.
The average temperature at the South Pole during the summer is 18 degrees colder than the recommended freezer temperature (-18°F). Now, depending on where you live, you might have experienced temperatures that cold while skiing, snowboarding, or just generally living your life (I’m talking to you, East Coast).
The average winter temperature at the South Pole, on the other hand, sits at a nice and warm -76°F. That you probably haven’t experienced. The coldest temperature ever recorded in Antarctica was a frigid -128.6°F (-89.2°C). In temperatures below -10°F, it can take just 10 minutes for frostbite to set in. Imagine what it would feel like in -120°F?
Related: How To Prevent Frostbite When Skiing And Snowboarding
Image Credit: Jeff Capps via Instagram