How Cold is it?
The temperature outside took a nose dive this weekend with windchills at around zero and that is warm compared to what many others are feeling. I’ve been hearing wild numbers like the thermometer reading 17 below zero and windchills at 30 to 40 below. Zero is plenty cold enough for me, but not too cold for the dogs and I to go walking. They have plenty of fur. I have plenty of coats. Tomorrow, though, I think I’ll wear two pairs of gloves. That will surely help if it’s still cold.
The picture of the cardinal among some icy branches isn’t from now but from a few years ago after an ice storm. While an ice storm can glitter and amaze, I would be quite fine never seeing one again. Snow can be a problem, but ice can be a disaster. One thing for sure, it can look really, really cold.
So how about we talk about how cold is it? In my upcoming release, The Song of Sourwood Mountain, I have one of my characters saying the day is “cold as a wedge.” I’ve heard that expression all my life, but never really thought about what it might mean. So, I looked it up. For once, Google wasn’t totally sure. The information I found said that Confederate soldiers used the terms in their letters home, and that Mark Twain wrote that someone was “dead as a wedge.” A wedge is a sharpened piece of iron that people use to split difficult blocks of wood for firewood. The person splitting the wood hammers the wedge in until the wood splits open. I’m not sure how that works with the cold as a wedge saying or why anyone would say dead as a wedge. All I do know is that outside right now it is “cold as a wedge.”
So what are some other ways we share how cold it is?
You might say it’s cold as a frog’s tail. That’s because since frogs don’t have tails, maybe they froze off. That’s kind of like answering that you are “finer than frog’s hair'” when someone asks how you’re doing. Frog hair is obviously so fine that you can never see it. We do come up with odd things to say out here in the country.
As a kid, I often heard that it was cold enough to be “hog killing weather.” Since I grew up on a farm, I know exactly what that means. When farmers killed hogs to store up meat for winter, they wanted the weather to be too cold for flies to be a bother while they worked up the meat. I can remember how cold hands got while they were cutting up some of the meat into chunks to grind for sausage or to make lard. The best job was stirring that big black kettle over an open fire while the fat pieces were cooking down into lard. A nice warm job on a cold hog killing day.
A few I found online were:
~It’s colder than a room of ex-wives.
~It’s colder than a golddigger’s heart.
I liked these following ones best:
~It was so cold if you made an ugly face, it really did stay that way.
~It was so cold kids were telling the most outrageous lies just hoping their pants would catch on fire.
Some time back when we must have been having another cold spell, I put these in one of our church bulletins to bring some smiles.
How cold is it? It’s so cold that
…teenage boys are pulling their pants up.
…cops yell “thaw” when chasing bad guys.
…somebody accidently pours hot coffee on your hands and you say thank you.
…you eat ice cream to warm up.
…hitchhikers are holding up pictures of their thumbs.
…old people are saying “When I was a kid,” and then going “nah, this is colder.”
…that your false teeth chatter and they’re still in the glass.
…that we had to cut up the piano for firewood. We only got two chords.
…that the muggers called in sick.
…that heartburn sounds like a nifty way to warm up.
Hope some of these made you smile. Hope you might smile too at the idea of being in a drawing to win your choice of one of my books. Thanks to those of you who cvommented on Wednesday’s post answering the questions I asked about my blog posts. Now to get another entry, you can leave another comment and answer a different question. Deadline for entries is midnight EST on Tuesday, Januray 16, 2024 and you must be at least 18 years old to enter.
Do you have other fun ways to express how cold it might be? Or just say how cold it is at your place right now?
If you answer that last question, please let us know where you are.
Comments 22
Author
Thanks for sharing about your cold Sunday and Monday. It stayed cold all day here, but the wind wasn’t blowing quite as hard. So, the wind chill was about the same as when the temperature was warmer but the wind was blowing harder. Does that even make sense?? Anyway, it’s supposed to stay cold for most of the week. Maybe it will kill off some of those summer ticks.
Connie S., I think it might be too cold to kill hogs. 🙂
It’s colder than an Eskimos outhouse=)
I live in South Carolina, so we haven’t been hit with the cold weather as much as some of the other parts of the country. It’s actually around 50 here today, but we are supposed to have some nights below freezing the rest of the week.
Author
I like that one, Patty. That would probably be pretty cold.
My daughter lives in SC and it was 50 plus degrees for her today. That would feel like summer to us now after this cold spell and who knows? It might be 50 plus degrees next week. The weather in Kentucky can bounce around.
It’s not cold in eastern N.C. (50’s) right now, but by Saturday, it is suppose to be a high of 37 in the day time and 18 at night. Still not terribly cold, but it is below normal for us.
Author
You’ll be shivering, Connie. Sometimes it’s a matter of what temperatures you are used to. My son who lives in WV talked about a neighbor he had once who had move there from North Dakota. He said when everybody else was frezing, he’d be taking out the garbage wearing a t shirt and shorts.
It’s 38 degrees in Northeast Ga, but the deep freeze is on its way! It must be the Global Warming at it again 🙂 !!!!
Author
Get out the gloves, Alva. Hope you find a way to stay warm.
It is a cold morning in my area of Pennsylvania at 15 degrees currently, but reading your post I am remembering some ice storms we have had and them well below zero temps and thinking it could be much worse. I can’t think of any other cold sayings but the ones you listed did make me smile. 🙂
Author
I’ll take the cold and snow over ice storms any day, Hope. Ice is not nice when it’s out there on our trees and grounds and knocking down our utility poles.
Glad the cold as sayings made you smile.
It’s 30 in Houston, TX, this morning, and we’re expecting temperatures in the low 20s for the next two nights. In our new retirement apartment this morning, our heat kicked on about 5:20 blowing smokey warm air into the master bedroom. Since I had the door closed, the accumulation of the smokey air caused the smoke alarm to sound, waking up my husband and me. Once I opened the bedroom door, the smokiness seemed to dissipate, and the alarm stopped. What a rude awakening!
Author
That was a rude awakening, but I’m glad it was nothing serious and there wasn’t a real fire. But the smoky air is a little worrisome.
My niece lives in Texas and she was complaining about the weather on FB today.
It’s 1 degree here in north central Ohio right now. It’s colder than Billy be damned. That’s one saying I used to hear. My dad used to say that it’s colder than a witch’s tit. People also say “cold as ice” but not really about weather. Usually about a person’s attitude. I imagine that in cold weather, a metal wedge would be extremely cold. As for “deader than,” we’ve always said “deader than a door nail.” Whatever a door nail is. I have no idea.
Author
Some people add in a brass brassiere to one of those, Lee. LOL. Haven’t ever heard the other one about Billy.
I’ve heard the deader than a doornail too. I just looked that one up. What I found said there were some disagreement about the meaning. One was that when the saying first was said that it referred to the metal nails in the doors of wealthier people when most people had wooden pegs for nails. It said the nails were flattened on the inside of the door and therefore couldn’t be used again. Another place said it was the metal nail under the door knocker that got flattened more every time the knocker hit it.
In our use and throwaway society, it’s a little hard for us to think about reusing nails but things were different back many years ago.
Those are both interesting theories about the origin of the door nail saying. I wonder if either one hit the nail on the head.
Author
LOL. Some things are hard to know for sure. Er, to get nailed down.
LOL! Yep, you nailed it.
It’s only 8 degrees here this morning in Corinth. Everything is quiet…the early birds must be all hunkered down in their nests. Ollie is curled up under a fleece blanket, with no desire to go out just yet. It has to be pretty cold to keep him from making his rounds in the neighborhood.
Stay warm out there on your morning walks this week, Ann. Thanks for sharing all the “it’s so cold…” sayings.
Author
Frankie says to tell Ollie he doesn’t know what he’s missing while hiding out under that fleece blanket, Lavon, but Marley says he’s ready to stay there with him. Sometimes I can just see Marley looking at Frankie and me and thinking what are we doing going out in this weather.
I didn’t hear many birds this morning, but plenty of them showed up at my feeder today. The cardinals always look great againmst the snowy background.
It’s 13 in Lexington.
I enjoyed seeing these very descriptive phrases about cold weather. My husband often says “It’s cold enough to kill hogs”, and it’s certainly that cold in Fleming County, Kentucky!
Mama used to say “It’s cold as Christmas”
Right now is 14 degrees here and it’s snowing, so it’s colder than this past Christmas.
It’s 12 degrees at 9:20 pm in Pennsylvania. We can expect a low of 9 degrees tonight.