Yes, we call this cold, even in Alaska.
My public service announcement (for families living with cold winters and pre-schoolers) via WFMW:
As part of your cold-weather emergency gear in the back of your car, include a sled big enough to haul all of your littles. This will help save your neck (back, fingers, toes…) if your car breaks down.
I don’t know about any of your pre-schoolers, but one of mine is a molasses child: she moves slower in the cold– complaining of her agony and how much she wants *out* of the cold.
There’s a sled in the back of my car because if we ever were stuck in temperatures like these, her pace would be a literal safety hazard, since there’s no moving faster than the slowest member (and I can’t carry two kids very far).
~
And, for people whose minds move to fun faster than mine, you’ve already realized keeping a sled in the back means you can stop and go sledding whenever you find a good hill. And that’s worth a lot too :)
What an ingenious idea! I’m from Maine and I remember many a winter when my parents would worry the cars wouldn’t crank in -double digit weather. We were always lucky! But it would have been great to have a sled for impromptu fun!
Uh . . . we call +34.6 degrees cold in Tennessee! LOL
Over Thanksgiving, my mom pulled out a couple of notebooks her mother had given her of all of the letters and cards my mom had sent when we lived in Alaska (my dad was stationed at Ft. Richardson) when I was a toddler. It’s so amazing to read about all of the things my mom experienced there, especially since she grew up in Louisiana—like plugging in the car so the battery wouldn’t freeze; teaching a 3- and 5-year-old to ski, because the snow was over our heads; our first experience sledding, when my dad let go and let us crash into a bush; the moose coming down from the hills behind the housing block to graze on the grass over where the hot-water pipes ran under the ground and melted the snow off . . .
Thanks for reminding me of such fun memories. And have fun sledding!