Atlanta is Far Enough North

Bobby over at BBWW noted this morning the brutally cold weather in International Falls, MN where it fell to 40 below F. It reminded me of my couple of short stays in the Aleutians off the Northern Coast of Alaska. It was the dead of winter and 40 below was a regular occurrence and when you add in the wind it caused a chill factor of 60 or more below. If you have never experienced such extreme weather it is really hard to relate how brutally cold it is.

You can't take a deep breath outside or it will freeze your lungs and for safety it is wise to use a warmer over you mouth to preheat the air before you breathe it in.
You always have to put your gloves on before you touch the doorknob leading to outside or your bare hand will freeze to the metal.
There is absolutely no moisture in the air as the cold air cannot hold it. Inside the windows are covered with a thick layer of ice as any moisture in the air from breath or whatever instantly freezes on the glass.
Unless you have a heated garage you have to have special block heaters on your car to keep the oil from freezing into fudge and even then gasoline becomes kind of jelly like and may or may not flow through the fuel lines.
We had a weather station in a large Quonset hut out away from the main station that had a very good kerosene heater that ran a full blast all the time. The interior of the hut was over a hundred F at the ceiling but we could keep our food frozen by just keeping it on the floor under the bunk. The temperature difference from the bottom bunk to the top was over 80F. You had to keep your feet up off the floor while you worked or potentially suffer frostbite. You can imagine the 50 yard trek out to the weather instrument box every three hours for measurements.
The mail and supply planes that came almost daily would have to leave their engines running for the hour or so they were on the ground or else they would freeze.

The icing (pun intended) on the cake was that I and a few others were sent there on temporary duty from Honolulu to repair a special antenna array which meant we were having to work outside. It took us over two weeks to repair it as we could only work outside for about 20 minutes at a time and then come in to warm up for an hour or so. Try and imagine working on radio cables (like your TV cable only a little bigger) with arctic rated mittens on.