Trivia

Today’s prompt: “A scene that takes place in extreme cold”

This year I did a couple of reading challenges. When you read a lot of books, sometimes you’ll find weird connections between them. Like how Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple and Whiteout by Greg Rucka both contain fun facts about Antarctica. Whiteout is on my bookshelf, so I can share a few from that book. Fun fact: While temperatures at the McMurdo research station on the Antarctic coast are typically around -5 degrees Celsius, which is warm enough for penguins, seals, insects and fish to survive in, the interior of Antarctica tends to stay at -70 degrees Celsius in the winter. Fun fact: Not even bacteria can survive at -70 degrees Celsius. Fun fact: Antarctica’s Vostok Station once recorded -89.6 degrees Celsius, a world record temperature that’s cold enough to freeze water vapor in your lungs. Fun fact: None of those temperatures are including wind chill, and winds sometimes get up to 320 kilometers an hour there.

I don’t know why you took that job in the Antarctic research station. And I don’t know why you walked out of the station alone on a frigid, blustery November day. But here’s another fun fact: You don’t survive Antarctica.