It’s Cold Outside (Part 1) 10/26/15

Today, October 26, the wind has been blowing down from Siberia bringing some of the lowest temperatures we have seen in Mongolia yet. The high for today is 37 degrees. When I walked to school, the weather channel website said it was 25 degrees with 18 mile per hour northern winds that brought the temperature to about 11 degrees. The wind seems to be a determining factor for the temperature. Wind chills make a pleasantly chilly day, bitterly cold.

As the weather gets colder, I have been adding more clothing to cut back the chill on my walk to school. Today I wore low grade long underwear leggings for the first time. I also wore corduroy pants, wool socks, hiking boots, an undershirt, a long-sleeved cotton shirt, a long sleeve dress shirt, a tie, a scarf around my face (thank you Miss Kim), a sock hat, and my Duluth trading company fleece jacket. The jacket and corduroy/long underwear combo was vital for cutting out the wind chill.

Yet, in the grand scheme of things, it is not yet that cold in Mongolia. The season is young and just cooling down. However, today is unique because I can safely say that the wind chill is colder than some of the colder days of a normal year in Birmingham. About once a winter, Birmingham will see temperatures at or around zero degrees Fahrenheit, but it is rare and even rarer for such a severe wind chill to affect our southern climate. In the last four years, I have often gone hiking throughout the year with my good friend Tyler. In January on Vulcan Trail overlooking the city with the wind sweeping over the curve of Red Mountain, Tyler and I would occasionally experience weather as cold as I have just experienced today at the end of October.

~Caleb