-30 and Air

This last week it's been between -30 and -38 when I've taken Jake to work in the morning. It's amazing to me how different -30 feels from -10 or so. The air almost burns as it touches your skin... Yeah, -10 is cold, but it almost feels like a heat wave after -30.

The other thing I notice at this temperature is how the air looks. You can see the air... It's beautiful and almost impossible to describe. All of the water in the air and some other fine particles freeze at that temperature, and they glisten when the sun strikes them. There's a twinkling haze in the air and the little particles reflect sunlight. Beautiful, but also rather disturbing when you realize you're trying to breathe the frozen stuff into your lungs...