How to prevent fingers from freezing?
I am a traffic officer and in winter I always have issues with fingers freezing. Are there any hints besides hand warmers to keep my fingertips from getting so cold they hurt? I direct traffic so swinging my arms around is not an option!
I put on rubber gardening gloves before I put on my winter gloves to help keep cold air from passing through.
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As Wills writes, you should focus on all your body parts. To survive the Polar Vortex you need:
- Winter boots. These should comprise of an outer boot and a removable inner boot. The inner boot should be well insulated from the outer boot.
- Trousers. You should wear long underpants, down-filled trousers and a wind stopper over that.
- Down filled jacket.
- A face mask. Coldavenger includes a ventilator that warms and moistens the air you breath in.
- Arctic hat, see e.g. here. You should wear a balaclava under such a hat.
- Ski goggles to protect your eyes from the cold wind.
- Arctic Mittens to keep your hands warm.
When dressed up properly, your face should look like this:
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Some general rules:
- layer system also for the hands is a good idea but those gardening gloves won't work pretty well
- better use inner liner gloves (wool or even a softshell glove) and a warm mitten as the outer layer
- to avoid cooling off use hats (again use a layer-system) including a warm winter hat which covers the ears (also see this about heat loss through the head)
- adjust the rest of your clothings because your cold hands are just the first sign of the entire body getting too cold: the human body will first lower the blood circulation in the limbs (hands, feet) to stabilize the body core temperature
- preventing wind-chill is very important, use windproof gloves!
- eat and drink more than you normally would, burning fat or complex carbohydrates will warm you from the inside while digesting (counterintuitively eating ice cream will warm you too)
- in breaks like you will most likely already do: swinging arms, rubbing hands, eating hot soups or drinking something hot (unless you aren't starting to sweat from the hot drink!)
As a traffic officer you could try to be very active while performing, a little dance will keep you warm and delight the people waiting in their cars ;)
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I have friends who swear by silk inners. They are thin, so can be worn under other gloves, but are extremely warm for the thickness. Combine these with windstopper outers - as mentioned elsewhere, layering is good practice.
On the downside, silk is really expensive, at least where I live.
On the upside, silk lasts a long time and doesn't get smelly.
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If the suggestions in Everything's answer don't work, try these heating options:
- Heated gloves (I have linked to an example)
- Hand warmer packs to tuck into your gloves
My wife has Reynaud's which leads to poor circulation in fingers and toes, so needs to use these solutions on occasion, and they are very effective.
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