What was the temperature without windchill for the climbers that "Minus 148 Degrees" is written about?
The book Minus 148 Degrees is written about a winter climb of Denali in which a rapid weather change forced the climbers to seek refuge in an emergency snow cave.
The title is a reference to the claim that the wind-chill temperature was negative 148 degrees F.
What was the actual temperature (as opposed to the wind-chill temperature) during this event?
I do not own a copy of the book and cannot find the answer to this, but I assume someone somewhere must know. If we at least have wind estimates we could work backward to estimate the temperature.
I did find an interview with the author of the book in which the interviewer mentions something about negative 40 degrees, but the author neither confirms nor denies this, and it could well be a typo in which 140 was intended, which might be likely as -148 degree wind chill from -40 degrees appears to require nearly hurricane wind speed.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/q/19803. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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From an ad for the book on the website of the AMC Store:
In 1967, eight men attempted the first winter ascent of Mount McKinley, now known as Denali. They faced winds in excess of 150 miles per hour and temperatures more than fifty below zero. The windchill temperature reached –148°. Three team members reached the summit only to be trapped at more than 18,000 feet by a six-day storm. In an ice cave less than a thousand feet below, their teammates waited helplessly until all hope ran out, and the three above were left for dead.
Going to Online Conversion.com, two formulas are given, one used pre-2001 and the other post 2001. The conversion gives
Old Wind Chill minus 67.42 F and New Wind Chill minus 122.69 F
The Old Wind Chill number is obvious nonsense, but the New Wind Chill is post 2001, so would not have been available to Davidson.
The windchill calculator on the National Weather Service website, says it cannot calculate windchill for a windspeed of greater than 110 mph. Plugging in 110 mph, one gets a windchill of minus 147 F for a T of minus 70 F. But this calculator uses the new formula. Ah well, let's see if the book is available from my local library.
This post was sourced from https://outdoors.stackexchange.com/a/19805. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.
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