Although I enjoy living in the Upper Midwest during the winter, I’m not especially tolerant of the cold. I’ve noticed that most people here wear a lot less than I do–lighter jackets, for example, fewer layers, often no hat or gloves. I expect they do this mainly because they’re simply going to and from heated buildings and cars. I find that it’s better for me to bundle up even if I’m exposed to the cold for a short time; it’s also safer in case you have to be outside unexpectedly for longer periods.

Over the years, I’ve gradually learned how to dress better for winter and be more comfortable. My approach is to have an almost entirely different wardrobe in the winter than in the summer. As a result, it’s not very often that I’m really cold, although I do get chilled from time to time. People have to dress differently based on their body type and metabolism. Me, I have to bundle up, so what follows are my tips for dressing well in winter–the product of many years of trial and error:

1. First, the obvious advice: dress in layers, as everyone says. It’s easy to add or take off layers as necessary.

2. Wear warm fabrics like wool, flannel, corduroy, and the newer polyester fleece products (Polartec, Capilene, Infinity, etc.); leave your cotton–including your denim, khaki, and other thin fabrics–in the closet, unless you are adding other layers to it or it is lined with flannel or fleece. As discussed last week, be aware that fabrics such as cotton and old-style polyester, when they are against your skin, can retain moisture and make you feel colder. (Lined jeans were one of my great discoveries years ago, making me much happier in winter.) Think about getting some heavier wool pants, although these usually have the disadvantage of needing to be drycleaned.

3. Since many people have to work outside year round, stores that sell work clothing are a good place to find lined jeans, lined khakis, and other warm clothing. L.L. Bean and Eddie Bauer are also good retailers of winter clothing.

4. Use long underwear, preferably the kind made of high-tech polyester (see last week’s column). I find silk long underwear isn’t very warm. Cotton long underwear works well if you’re not exercising.

5. Wear mittens, not gloves. Mittens cut down on the surface area exposed to the cold, and they let your fingers snuggle together and keep each other warm. Layer smaller mittens inside larger ones on especially cold days.

6. Wear a jacket that has a hood. This keeps your head and face warm as well as your head. Also, if the jacket has a good collar that zips around the neck, I find that I don’t need a scarf as a result. Alaskans, I’m told, often use a jacket with a fur-lined hood that has a tube-like portal for the face–kind of like seeing out of a periscope–and provides extra protection in severe cold.

7. Socks: I’m currently experimenting with these. I like thick cotton socks, but I’m also trying SmartWool socks, and I might try fancy Capilene socks. So far, I’ve found my feet are too warm when indoors while wearing shoes and SmartWool socks, though the socks are great for being outside. Consider regular wool socks too.

8. Boots: Heavy boots are good for snowy or super-cold conditions. I’ve always had a pair of heavy boots with a thick felt lining. The Canadian brand Sorel is the famous name for this kind of boot. Mukluks, which are Native American-style boots, are supposed to be really good and less bulky, but I haven’t yet tried them. They tend to be more expensive, but some day I hope to own a pair. Patti Steger, wife of arctic explorer Will Steger, established a company, Steger Designs, that is known for making quality moosehide mukluks and moccasins in Ely, Minnesota. I was surprised recently when I saw some Steger mukluks available at a local chain, Schuler Shoes. You can also order them online at the Steger web site or over the phone.

9. Wear turtlenecks or, as I prefer, mock turtlenecks. Or buy a neck gaiter, or “turtle” as it’s sometimes called, which you pull over your head and wear around your neck. This can also be pulled up over your lower face to keep you warm.

For extreme cold, wear a facemask that covers your head and neck too, sometimes called a balaclava. This is especially important if you don’t have a hood on your jacket or your nose is sensitive to cold, as my wife’s is.

10. Down coats are great if you’re not exercising a lot. I think they’re necessary if you’re living in a climate such as ours. Insulated pants like snowpants or ski pants are good if you’re outside a long time or doing something like snowmobiling. The all-in-one snowmobile suit is really warm, though I haven’t worn one since I was a kid. They’re like an insulated jump suit. Again, people who work outside have different varieties of these suits for keeping warm.

11. Wear a hat that covers your ears! Or at least wear earmuffs or a headband. Don’t try to be cool and go without one, like the New Yorker I knew when attending college in Chicago. He took a walk to Lake Michigan in winter sans hat and nearly frostbit his ears. Fleece and wool are good for hats. Forgot about non-fleece polyester knit hats or loosely knitted wool. There are some very cool hats out there; leave them on indoors to avoid being seen with hathead. As for myself, hathead never bothered me.

According to a Norwegian saying, there is no bad weather, only bad clothes. If we want to enjoy all weather here in the Upper Midwest, where the climate is colder than Norway’s, we’d better have darn good clothes.

This week I’ll discuss newer types of winter clothing that feature high-tech fabrics like Polartec and Capilene. Next week I’ll give other tips for cold-weather clothing that are the result of hard-earned experience.

I don’t intend the following to sound like a consumer guide for expensive, brand-name clothing. Instead, I mean to provide some knowledge that will help people to enjoy winter more, especially if they are outside exercising. In our technological age, clothing, like everything else, is changing quickly.

The New Model for Winter Wear

The older models of winter clothing worked fine for the most part. Native Americans survived for millennia wearing animal skins and furs. For all I know, there still may not be anything invented that’s as warm as fur. Native Americans invented their own mittens, boots, and coats with hoods, and we would do well to keep those innovations.

European immigrants added other fabrics such as cotton and wool, and they even wore long underwear made of the latter. By the time I was a kid in the 1970’s, nylon, polyester, and other artificial fabrics were common. We also had down insulation (bird feathers, if you didn’t already know). The down coat was probably one of the more important clothing innovations available at that time–a coat with a wind-breaking outer fabric and down insulation sewn into the lining. I still wear down coats today and find them to be warmer than thinner artificial insulations such as Thinsulate.

Although closing based on the old models worked well, it was heavy, bulky, and did not dry quickly. Today there are still more new fabrics that have led to what I’m calling the new model of winter wear. In 1979, Malden Mills invented Polar Fleece, the polyester fabric that made living in winter easier. Polar Fleece and similar fabrics are one of the greatest recent inventions in cold-weather clothing: they are lightweight, insulate well, and dry quickly.

Cold-weather clothing made from the new high-tech fabrics can be divided roughly into three categories: 1) underwear that is designed to be worn next to your skin and carry or “wick” moisture away from your body so that it can evaporate; 2) an insulating layer (or layers) that is warm but still releases moisture, sometimes called a “soft shell”; and 3) an outer layer or “hard shell” that provides protection from the wind (and, as a disadvantage, usually doesn’t release moisture from your body). Thus the new model for really cold weather has at least these three layers, with the option to add more layers of insulation if necessary.

Some brand names for the new underwear are Malden Mills’ Polartec, Patagonia’s Capilene, and Marmot’s Infinity. All are designed to keep you dry, because if you are sweating and the moisture stays on clothing that is against your skin, your body will lose heat faster and you’ll feel colder. Don’t forget that socks and hats are against your skin as well; these too can be made of the high-tech fabrics.

For insulation layers, brand names include Gore and Polartec, which both make new insulation that is also supposed to protect against the wind. For the outer layer, Gore-Tex is a leading brand that is waterproof and windproof.

Good manufacturers of outdoor winter clothing–companies like Patagonia, Marmot, and North Face–will make use of these new fabrics, as will less expensive store-brand clothing from retailers such as REI, Galyan’s, and Midwest Mountaineering. It won’t hurt to check the labels to see what fabrics are used.

The “new model” of winter clothing is something that I’m slowly adapting to. I’m sure many younger folks have known only this model, while many older folks are getting by on the old one. I have some doubts that it’s really possible to stay warm without a down coat in the Upper Midwestern winter, but for the most part the new approach seems to make sense.

It isn’t cheap to get the new stuff, but because it’s lighter and keeps you drier (and therefore warmer) it’s probably worth the extra cost. If you’re not outside exercising in winter, it’s less necessary to get the new fabrics. But even if you’re only running errands, you can sometimes work up a sweat while wearing heavy clothing and going in and out of a car and buildings. The new fabrics will keep you more comfortable in that situation as well.

Stranger stuff lies ahead for the future of winter wear. Polartec already makes something it calls Heat Technology, a kind of “electronic textile” that uses rechargeable batteries to provide heat via a garment. Someday even this may seem normal.

Weather Notes

You may have heard about the frigid low temperature in Embarrass, Minnesota, on January 17: minus 54 degrees, only six degrees higher than the state record set in Tower, the next town north of Embarrass. We were considerably warmer here in Northfield, where it was only 15 below. However, the lack of snow cover continued to cause trouble even here. We awoke the morning of the 17th to find that our cable TV and Internet service was out. The ground had most likely heaved and severed the line as the frost continued to penetrate deep into the ground. A new orange cable now snakes across the yard, waiting for spring before it can be buried.

Yesterday I watched the mercury on our thermometer sink. It was about 18 degrees when I got up; when I went to bed, it was 8 degrees below zero. This morning it was 12 degrees below zero with a wind chill of about 30 below, and we are likely to remain below zero for three or four days in the Twin Cities. The forecast for today is a high of minus 5.

We received ample notice of the cold weather. For several days weather forecasts predicted the arrival of a cold front from Siberia by way of Canada, and they were right on target.

The last several winters in the region have been mild, I’m told, so people are making more fuss than usual about the cold. As cold as it is with these below-average temperatures, it’s still normal to have stretches like this during an Upper Midwestern winter.

Our temperatures, though cold, are still above record lows. The low temperature record for Minnesota, 60 degrees below zero, was set in 1996 in the northern town of Tower. That same winter I was in the Twin Cities, and I remember it being around 35 degrees below zero at the coldest there–probably the coldest temperatures I have ever experienced. We are also unlikely to match the record for the longest period of subzero temperatures: the coldest stretch in state history was 186 hours of subzero temperature from December 31, 1911, to January 8, 1912–over a week of really cold weather.

When I learned about that last record, it proved false something that I had told my wife before we moved to Minnesota last summer. I had been trying to give her a realistic picture of winter, and I said that for a week or two the temperature might not rise above minus twenty degrees. I was wrong, I’m glad to say, and in reality it is much warmer. Relatively balmy, right?

Reality changes when temperatures drop well below zero. Mechanisms that worked well at higher temperatures no longer work. A car’s antifreeze, usually mixed at 50 percent water and 50 percent antifreeze, begins to freeze at 34 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. The chemicals put on roadways no longer melt ice. Mercury in thermometers freezes at 38 degrees below zero. Someone who once lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, told me that at really low temperatures car tires freeze; when you start driving the tires clunk for a while, because the tire retains the flat shape where it rested on the ground (this has never happened to me here in the Upper Midwest). There is always the nose test too: when the temperature drops below zero, the inside of your nose freezes as you breathe. This isn’t necessarily dangerous, by the way.

As the temperature dropped yesterday, I decided to get outside and embrace the cold. In return, it slapped me in the face. I bundled up absurdly well and walked only about a half mile or so to a nearby park. I did not cover up the area around my eyes adequately, and walking into the wind was a painful experience. With wind chills this low, the warning is always to cover up all exposed skin.

The world record low temperature, by the way, is 128 degrees below zero, set in Antarctica–illustrating that the Upper Midwest is not really in the same league as polar and subpolar regions. Even Canadian cities to our north are significantly colder than we are. Regina, Saskatchewan, for example, will likely have high temperatures of about minus twenty degrees over the next several days–that’s about twenty degrees colder than here. These people, and those farther north in Canada, Russia, and northern and interior Alaska are greater winter heroes than we.

For comparison, here are average January temperatures (Fahrenheit) for selected northern cities,:

Oslo, Norway: 27
Chicago: 21
Moscow, Russia: 13.5
Minneapolis: 12
Fargo, North Dakota: 6
Novosibirsk, Russia: 4
Regina, Canada: 1
Winnipeg, Canada: -1
Harbin, China: -2.6
Fairbanks, Alaska: -10
Yellowknife, Canada: -13
Yakutsk, Russia (Siberia!): -39

At Vostok 2, Antarctica, the average August temperature is minus 95 degrees. In comparison to that, I live in paradise.

Sources: worldclimate.com, weatherbase.com, and The World Almanac and Book of Facts

Next week: Dressing for winter

As readers know, I felt some dread about the coming of winter. Four years of living in the mid-Atlantic climate of New Jersey and two years in the Mediterranean climate of California made me wonder if I could stand the cold. Fortunately, that dread seems to have dissipated and has been replaced with, strangely enough, something like joy mixed with some pride. The joy comes about, I think, because my sensations of winter so far bring back pleasant memories. As I feel the cold air on my face, my subconscious associates it with good times: sledding downhill at breakneck speed, skating on the bumpy ice of a lake, cross-country skiing across an undulating prairie. The pride? I think it comes from a sense of successful adaptation, a feeling of resourcefulness that says, I thrive here.

We must be wary of pride, of course. Mine is born of reality as well as illusion. The reality-based pride results from overcoming the minor hardships of 21st-century life in an Upper Midwestern winter. I swell as I assert a he-manly power over the elements. I feel that real pride when I suit up in a way that keeps me warm when outside and the temperature is below zero, or when I help my family do so as well. I feel it when I turn the half-frozen mixture of California windshield washer fluid in my car into a more potent brew that can withstand Minnesota temperatures. I feel it when I de-ice the sidewalk and driveway with salt and blows from a heavy-headed ice chopper.

The illusory element of this pride? That’s the part that tells me I am better than others: I am stronger than you because I live here and you whine about a fifty-degree day. Well, how hard can it be to thrive here when I spend most of my time indoors, kept warm by fossil fuels, high-tech clothing, and food bought in a grocery store? If I believe I am a rugged survivor of winter, I should consider all the technology and social systems that support me. The Inuit man who lived hundreds of years ago above the Arctic Circle (1700 miles north of here) and fashioned the harpoon that fed his family, he had reason to be proud, not this wintering Walter Mitty.

Recent Particulars of Winter

On Saturday, New Year’s Day, the first day of 2005, a nasty ice storm hit. My wife and I went into Cub Foods around noon, and when we came out an hour later, freezing rain was falling, and our car was coated with ice. Later we heard thunder, a strange event in winter. When it was all over, a thick layer of ice topped with a little snow covered everything. The result has been a lot of careful driving and time spent clearing ice from cars, steps, walks, and driveways.

My wife has been quite concerned about the driving conditions, as she should be. As I drove downtown the other day, I saw a minivan that had hit a telephone pole. The driver was on her cell phone and waved an OK sign at the man who approached her offering help. She must have hit the breaks too hard at the stop sign and slid on ice. Despite the city’s best attempts to lay down sand and salt, it can still be icy.

I can understand people who view all of these aspects of winter as inconveniences. In most of California, you don’t have to spend five or ten minutes dressing each time you go outside. You don’t have to shovel snow or removing ice (though you might have to tend to your lawn). You don’t have to watch the weather report for snow and ice before your drive to Grandma’s house (though you might have to watch out for fog).

A few days after the ice storm, I realized I needed an ice chopper like the one my parents have. This is a simple rectangular piece of metal with a slightly sharpened blade about eight inches wide and fixed to a long handle. All of the ice choppers were out at one hardware store. I went to another and saw near the front door a strange-looking device that looked like a jack-hammer; it was surrounded by broken ice shards. An employee told me the tool was originally designed for removing floor tiles; he said he didn’t think he’d keep using it. Inside I found what appeared to be a good ice chopper–made by Yo-Ho of Monticello, Iowa. It has a black blade that is heavier than my parents’ chopper and appeals to the consumer-materialist in me.

While the states south of us have been socked by storm after storm and lots of snow, we’ve had little of the stuff. The Twin Cities has the least amount of snow this far into winter in 114 years–less than three inches, even counting that ugly ice on New Year’s Day. This fact comes to me by way of today’s front page of the Star Tribune, which featured a story on the “brown winter.” (Northern and southern Minnesota have more snow.)

Snow acts as an insulating blanket on the ground, so with the cold temperatures we’ve had recently (ranging from about 10 below zero Fahrenheit to 20 above) the frost penetrates deeper into the ground. It will kill perennial garden plants unless they have been covered with leaves. Our plants got only a thin coating of leaves, so they may be in trouble.

Our quiet little neighborhood had some excitement as a result of the penetrating frost. As we drove down our street yesterday evening, I saw water pouring down the sidewalk and gutter of a cross-street. Then I saw further up the hill that water was gushing by some condos. We stopped by the police station and notified them of the problem. When we came back a couple of hours later, a city crew was repairing the damage. I spoke to one of the men working in the dark and cold. He said it was the third water main brake this winter in the city. Without snow cover, he said, the ground freezes to a greater depth, moves, and breaks pipes. Such is the power of physics, of water expanding and soil moving, of winter’s grip.

Weather Facts

From the Star Tribune, January 1: “According to Prof. Mark Seeley at the University of Minnesota, excluding the polar regions of Alaska, Minnesota reported the coldest temperature in the United States on a total of 55 days in 2004.” The national low (always excluding Alaska in this column) was minus 39 in Grand Forks, ND, on January 5 and minus 44 in Embarrass, MN on January 6. Temperatures have sometimes been thirty degrees warmer here in southern Minnesota.

I’m keeping an eye on Canada, where the people of the Prairies (their word for what we call the plains or the Midwest) are weathering even colder weather. Moscow, Russia, is relatively balmy, meanwhile, with highs above freezing.