On the day after it was minus 10 degrees I heard a person ask a man, “How cold was it yesterday?” His response was, “Oh, it was freezing.” I could not contain myself and said, “Excuse me, but yesterday we passed freezing when the windchill was 40 degrees warmer.” Come on! Freezing?

So I was thinking there had to be some more descriptive words for how cold it was. My first thought was frigid, but I decided to look that definition up to see if it was a strong enough word for the occasion. Frigid mean extremely cold. Ok, we are already getting somewhere. Many adjectives can modify the word cold there, like unbelievably cold, remarkably cold, or need an igloo cold. So I asked some students today for a list and it was a bit different. Tundric, Arctic weather, polar temps, and Jack Frost’s birthday were a few that were shared.

I brought up the Kelvin scale and someone said that they were learning about absolute zero. Ha, now we were getting on it. Absolute zero is the temperature where nothing is moving. Partly true. My car battery died so it wasn’t moving. Pipes were freezing so water wasn’t moving. I heard some teachers were outside throwing boiling water into the air and watching it freeze before hitting the ground.

If you are ever asked “How cold was it?”, consider using the Kelvin scale, but at least be creative. So Jack Frost was born in March, eh? I checked with Google on this and it gave two different dates, neither of which were the Jack Frost I am interested in, and it referenced the movie Frozen. Not feeling that one, but I am feeling like having a happy Friday.