A Hole Where You'll Freeze to Death | Geography of Extreme Microclimates
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- Опубліковано 28 вер 2024
- Geography nerds can tell you that the most severe winter weather can be found on high mountain peaks, rather than low valley floors...but in some parts of our world, it's actually the opposite. Despite their lower elevation, these places are notorious for their extreme winter cold, thanks to a quirk of geology that shapes the landscape in a unique way. In this video we'll explore weird climates around the Alps, Rockies, Sierra Nevadas, and more. These are some of the Earth's most extreme microclimates.
Sources:
NOAA
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Temperature Inversion Breakup in the Gstettneralm Sinkhole, May 2003. International Conference on Alpine Meteorology. Bernhard Pospichal, Stefan Eisenbach, Reinhold Steinacker.
Formation of Extreme Cold-Air Pools in Elevated Sinkholes: An Idealized Numerical Process Study, April 2005. Günther Zängl.
The Climate Near the Ground (Seventh Edition). Rudolph Geiger, Robert H. Aaron, Paul Todhunter.
A Sinkhole Experiment in the Eastern Alps. Reinhold Steinacker, Manfred Dorninger, Stefan Eisenbach, Alois M. Holzer, Bernhard Pospichal University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria, Charles D. Whiteman, PNNL, Richland, Washington, Erich Mursch-Radlgruber, Agricultural University, Vienna, Austria.
Mountains & Man: A Study of Process and Environment. Larry W. Price.
Microclimate, Vegetation, & Fauna. Ph. Stoutjesdijk, J.J. Barkman.
Minimum Temperatures, Diurnal Temperature Ranges, and Temperature Inversions in Limestone Sinkholes of Different Sizes and Shapes. C.D. Whiteman, T. Haiden, B. Pospichal, S. Eisenbach, R. Steinacker.
Geography of the World's Agriculture
By Vernor Clifford Finch, Oliver Edwin Baker
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Another large, nearly enclosed valley (and a frost hollow) is in central Alaska, through which the Yukon river flows. On the banks of the river is Fort Yukon, which has the lowest monthly mean temperature ever recorded in Alaska and the United States.
Excellent content. This may have already saved someone's life. 0:30 "Well drained, low lying meadows seem like the most inviting camp sites at first glance" They would definitely have fooled me.
Jack London's To Build a Fire, one of the most visceral portrayals of the deadly danger of cold is set there, with temperatures below -60 C
How come some valleys are warmer or more mild cold wise? Just lower elevation or something to do with it being a valley? Like I get that cold travels down and collects, so why would the reverse be more common?
Yah I lived in Alaska for 30 years, near Fairbanks. I’ve seen -68 in, I think about 1989. It was a record. But the whole valley is colddddd. Interesting topic !
@@MVargicI grew up in Connecticut and always remember having read that in a school English class and then got to experience that cold. Who knew after serving an enlistment I’d move to Alaska and worked in the Arctic over 30 years. I worked in the oilfield and along the pipeline. I worked at a pump station 20 miles north of the Arctic circle for 6 years. One time the helicopter mechanic/weather observer and I told he fancy mercury thermometer and went down the bottom of a hill and it read -67F. My job had me driving in all weather and I’d take the temperature probe of my Fluke meter and tape it to the outside mirror and watch the temperatures change 30-40 degrees between the top and bottom of a hills. We used to snowshoe after work in temps down to -30F.
I learned about this phenomenon from reading Louis L'Amour novels. His main characters always made a point to camp overnight halfway up a hill because they knew the coldest place was at the bottom of the valley.
Rivers in June Vermont are quite cold!
I read those books as a kid, and years later continued that practice of keeping OUT of the low laying area! It saved me more than once!
This is a great example of practical knowledge delivered in an entertaining way. Descriptive literature is educational!
Aghh, very wise. Thanks for the comment mate.
@@FightingForFacts7074It can be, if the author researches the period and setting for their novels. I know that such research by authors of fiction was considered a fundamental part of writing at least up through the 80s. There were even people paid to fact check historical, geographical, scientific, etc. information that was either stated or implied in the novel. What I don’t know, is whether this is still the norm in publishing. It’s definitely not true for a lot of the self published stuff you see on Amazon.
I've made the mistake of camping in a hole before. Didn't have a thick sleeping bag because it was summer. The coldest I've ever been in my life.
At least it was summer. 🤷♂️
why are all of the replies to this 1 year old comment within one day of each other?
@@whatare9731 Algorithm works in mysterious ways
@@whatare9731The Algorithm resurrected the video, and we did a little necro-posting. It happens.
Love the cold to death
I'v typically avoided camping in holes due to potential rain funneling or snow accumulation. Thanks for making my outdoor experience more informed all the same.
This was incredible.
This is PRECISELY what I was searching for.
No ads, no unnecessary dramatics, or annoying music, just a video with continually informative viewing.
Excellent.
Excellent first video to your channel that I enjoyed and learned about the cold spots I didn’t know existed. Hope to see more content over time.
Well done video !
We have such "frost hollows" here in Italy too, both in the Appennines and in the Alps.
Some sinkholes record lows till -35°/-40°C even just at 1.200-1.500m altitude.
My actual god damned house sits in a hole just beneath a mountain. It's ALWAYS at least five degrees colder than elsewhere, even in summer. In winter, well, nights are not nice
@@riograndedosulball248 gimme that over louisiana weather anyday. i'd rather freeze to death than be a blood bank host for a colony of mosquitoes as the rest of my body moisture is converted into sweat
We've had -41.8°C recorded at the Brévine in Switzerland too, and it's barely above 1000m. Record temperatures close to it at the same altitude are generally around -25°C for comparison.
@@Birbucifer here is the catch of my location: I am in subtropical Brazil, it's cold enough to snow sometimes, but enough not to kill all the mosquitoes. As such, part of the hole is a bog that keeps breeding them on forever, so in winter there are some mosquitoes and in summer, I am trapped down here with a cloud of them that cannot disperse.
I drew the short stick of inherited farmland
@@riograndedosulball248dunk sufficient clear mineral oil (just like baby oil/candle oil) on the water to form a 1mm thick layer all over. Or a school of small larvae eating fish
Anyone who has lived in the desert and drives through rolling hills in the late evening can feel this by sticking their hand out of the window. It's incredible how only 100 feet top to bottom can make. In the trough, it can feel quite cold, but as you drive to the peak, it's nice and warm.
One of the best videos, on a phenomenon I was totally unaware of, I've ever seen! No idea why YT rec'd it 2 years later, but I'm glad they did!
It was during the 3rd week of May many years ago when we camped in the San Luis Valley during our bicycle tour. We awoke to a heavy frost that nearly collapsed some of our tents.
Where in the valley? We have some property near Crestone so very curious.
@@mindcoloredSLV Not far east off of 285. North of Alamosa but closer to Hooper. That was 1986.
I love that valley with all my heart! Soooo chilly at night!!!
I spent a couple winters in San Louis in the San Louis Valley. One winter it snowed in October and didn't melt until May. Every night we'll below zero.
This video felt like sitting inside in a comfortable chair with a blanket. That was so relaxing. Thank you. The voice, slowly explaining everything bit by bit and not information information information in an annoying loud tone. Thanks again. That felt good.
I once saw this thermodynamic phenomenon!
Unusual circumstances saw me driving past a nearby canyon early in the morning, and in the barest light of pre-dawn, I saw a river of fog flowing out of one end of the canyon and into a broader valley where the fog filled a depression forming a kind of fog-lake.
Then, of course, the sun rose and evaporated all of the fog.
I actually live in the Upper Snake River Valley, I can attest it gets bitterly cold here in winter. It doesn't help that the main wind direction is SW to NE, the same direction the valley is oriented, so cold air just pools up on the valley floor in places like Rexburg and St. Anthony, since it can't easily be pushed uphill. The sun, quite literally, has to bake the cold away, not an easy task when there's also several feet of snow accumulation every winter.
"Those depressions can persist over time" - I felt that deep.
Great video, thanks for making it.
Good stuff dude. Keep up this quality and you'll go far.
I mean this as purely constructive criticism but a tiny bit of work on a couple things could net a huge improvement. A couple of flubbed line reads and audible inhales here, for which a second take and a bit of editing would not go amiss. Still a great vid, just saying that on a technical and vibes level this sounds like an impromptu recording of a lecture given by a new-but-passionate TA. Hope quality goes up, but I'm not going to complain so long as the subject matter stays interesting. 😅
This also explains what happened to the (now enshrouded in conspiracy theories) Dyatlov Pass expedition. Where a group of well trained students, led by an experienced guide, died "mysteriously" during a cold winter night. This well known cold effect combined with over-exertion of the expedition members, sweaty clothes, too late setting of camp and no dry spare clothing finally leading to the death of all the expedition members. The rescue party found some of the dead bodies almost naked and away from camp. Theory persist that they had tried to escape some kind of horror. In this case the horror was hypothermia caused by lack of knowledge of this fact and preparation to avoid consequences.
No.
If you're interested in a really good video on the subject, Lemmino has a wonderful video essay on it. There's some neat details he gets into that most documentaries don't.
Very well put together and presented.
I've watched hundreds of documentaries and this is in my opinion is one of the best.
Well done sir.
The best example of this is in Siberia. In Yakutia during the winter the further down you go the colder it gets. In fact the average low in Yakutia in winter within these valleys is -50°C. They also recorded the lowest temperature in the Northern Hemisphere of -68°C in the towns of Verkhoyansk and Oymyakon. It is also said that the surrounding mountains are on average 10 to 20°C warmer than the valleys.
youtube algorithm you've done it again! glad to see this video gain traction two years later cus it's really deserved. really enjoyed this video and can't wait to go through all your other videos
Where I live, we got two mountain Ranges enclosing the area. We sit on the Lee side, where the wind gusts warm up. But we got a big lake that warms up During summer that sits in a long valley, and when the surrounding air gets colder in winter, you got a sheet of fog above the valley for months.
We have a local valley near where I live in Norway, which is called the Ice-valley (Isdal in Norwegian). A valley with peaks on both sides, and a place where the sun goes quickly down due to angle of valley. A lake in the middle, so not possible to camp at the coldest spot, but still, if one is out in nature a lot one really notice how geography influences the temperatures. The cold air coming down the mountainsides, and equally opposite on mountainsides that are turned into the sun, with heat coming up the sides in the summer.
5:11 surprised we haven't taken advantage of this phenomena to make cold storage basins makes me wonder how cold the bottom of an open cast mine in one of these areas could get
Finally, saw this video ages ago and been thinking about it recently and it just pops up in my suggested list!
I have camped in a similar shaped valley once before in Australia. It was insanely cold at night and I couldn't understand what the hell was going on.
Not only a very great channel with high educational value, but it also provides interesting ideas for Worldbuilding!
If you ever find yourself camping in cold environments it’s a good idea to not only sleep above the raw floor (ice cold ground) but also to make a much lower depression for cold air to fill instead of settling on you.
After all hot air rises or something.
I wonder if cold air 'tables' exist like water tables. An interesting thought that there are volcanic gases being supercooled.
For hikers & campers, this is why it's important to pack a sleeping bag, mat, and clothing that goes below the predicted minimum temperature of the days on the hike, even if it's late spring to early fall. The forecast of the days might say the lowest it'll get will be 8C at night, but if you're camped in a hollow like this, it can get much lower.
This is why survival schools teach you to avoid the low areas when camping for the night. Many think that if they get out of the wind by getting in the lowest place possible then they will be warm. In reality you want to avoid the low areas but still stay out of the wind.
Where i live, at winter, when there is no wind, i can feel the sheer cold flow down the hill side as i walk outside. Always strange having my feet colder than my body.
Now that I think about it, the times I’ve been the coldest were in camping in a depression/valley. I’m curious if that’s the same as a hole in this sense. I was literally so cold in one of the loop trails in snowmass villages i gauged my chance for survival based on another camper being in the area. I usually prefer valleys because it feels less scary when I have to pee in the middle of the night lol.
Well made and informative! If I had any critique to give, it would be to try and get a better quality microphone. It is *very* compressed right now, and picks up inhalations and lip smacks pretty easily.
We can hear the guy sucking air after every sentence. It sounds like he has emphysema.
Well , you spoke perfectly , no hype no camping it up , not too fast or too slow , and a p,easant voice , just subbed xx
excellent job of making this vidoe; all around, Thank You.
Really interesting!!
Immediately subscribed to your channel.
Thank you, thoroughly enjoyed learning the details of these microclimates. You are a good explainer, hope you went into teaching.
Wow your teaching style really works for me. Thanks for the fantastic video.
I forecasted weather in a valley location and this was something we had to think about constantly. Especially when we had a cold front moving through.
It is fairly common in winter where I live to get inversions (western Colorado area) that are capable of forming a capped inversion so strong that weather gets pushed aside into the mountains, leaving the valley untouched. The mountains thousands of feet above us are warmer than we are, even. Thankfully since the valley opens up into the desert to the west it will drain given some time, but for a few days it gets cold enough to cause problems.
Midslope southern exposures can be t shirt weather on even fairly cold winter days.
If you have a fire and warm clothing, you will certainly not freeze to death.
A couple like this in Colorado. Gunnison and alamosa can go days below zero while the rest of the state is above freezing
This is my favorite UA-cam channel as a Geologist by education.
We've got a microclimate here in Victoria, BC, where one yard manages to have summer flowers in November. ONE YARD, and passionflowers and clematis in bloom, with snow elsewhere. It's not even a big yard, either.
As a tangent the Salt Lake and Utah valleys routinely get "cold air inversions" where the cold air sinks like you describe and get stuck. This is problematic because people are doing people things and polluting the air. With a cold air inversion leads to the pollution just building up. A couple years ago SLC had the worst pollution of any major city in the world for a couple days.
I had always wondered why on a return trip from Blarney Castle, Ireland I felt cold so sudden and pervasive I thought I was going to go into shock. The return trip takes you through a strangely deep depression alongside a river which i guess had nowhere to go, except into my soul. That or I was possessed by spirits when I kissed The Blarney, hanging upside down off the battlements 🤔
I went survival camping with a buddy in the mountains near las vegas and we buried our cooler and never had to refill on ice except maybe once. It remained frozen most of the time
Wow! This was the most interesting and informative random video by the algo. Thank you Casual Earth.
Humans have been using this phenomenon to their advantage since ancient times to freeze ice even in desert climates. Pretty incredible!!
Thank you for this very informative video!
When I was in the Navy I did SERE training, in the dead of winter in the mountains of northern mMaine. When we pitched our tents in the snow we had to do it it in a way the cold air pooled away from us, plus we had to spoon nut to butt to conserve heat
This video so had much potential, but I immediately abandoned after the audio quality discovery. Deserves a remake. Seems very interesting.
I noticed this phenomena when riding my motorcycle at night on rural roads with plenty of crests and valleys.
I really like this channel ❤️
It reminds me of the TV my teacher would wheel out when we got to watch science VHS
Used to ‘camp’ in a van in a car park in a hollow, in the morning there would be ice on the windscreen even when there was nothing on any cars elsewhere. I would clear the windscreen and drive up the hill and the oddly cold windscreen would condense out water vapour from the warmer air immediately coming out of the hollow and freeze it on the screen meaning I’d have to defrost the windscreen again several times going up the hill out of there. Very unexpected. Didn’t stop me camping there but it was always bloody cold
i naturally would have picked the lowest point possible to set up my tent, simply because it feels comfortable and safe. crazy to watch this video haha
You didn’t mention the fact that camping out at the bottom of a mountain can also result in death from a alvalance!!
This is why I always carry an extensive setup for sleeping I’ll carry my sleeping bag plus a heating liner incase it gets colder not including a klimate sleeping pad rated 4.5 and a foam sleeping pad. People don’t realize how cold the ground is, you can have the coldest rated sleeping bag but unless you have a thick enough insulator for the ground you’ll freeze. The ground literally saps your heat away and when your outdoors it can be deadly.
I didn’t know about this phenomena, I guess this is something that I should keep in my back pocket of knowledge.
You should make a video about caves and why caves in an area can have different temperatures.
Antero Reservoir in Colorado is notoriously cold, too.
I saw it in Montenegro in Durmitor mountains.
Fucking scary how cold it was even one hour before sundown.
And the "hole". God damn, a true abyssal stuff
I never understood when I my dad told me natives would go to the hills during winter since it was warmer until now. My child brain was like “no there’s snow, it can’t be warmer when there’s no snow in the valley”
Any fisherman can tell ya about how cold valleys can get. I live on an escarpment...a large waterfall cut a deep valley...the temp drops as aoom as the sun goes away and man can ypi feel it. The forecast may say -15 C, but it is like a warmth sucking void down in that valley. Lovely camping in the warmer season...one of my fav spots of all time.
"Hey, this hole looks great. Let's build a village in it" - the people of La Brévine, probably
I live in one, it can be up to 20F colder at my house than on the surrounding ridges.
I notice the temperature difference in even mildly hilly areas.
And the "coolies" along the Mississippi river are like that. On a hot day, I could find the naturally air-conditioned areas, where the change could be abrupt, like walking into a room.
The coolies would create fascinating atmospheric conditions between the bluffs when the weather was just right. There would be towers of mist rising a hundred feet into the air and slowly twisting like ghosts.
Nice and very informative video. It's nice to see this type of content where lots of research has been put into 🍪🍪
Last winter here in Maine we hit -46F. The woods sounded like a firing range.
Sveg, Sweden. Is located in a crater, winters are a lot colder than it is a couple hours north and summer days gets unbearable due to the heat. It's fascinating driving through and seeing the temp drop some 10 degrees
It’s quite interesting that those record low temperatures are approaching the geologic temperature of the Earth. It will be very difficult to get temperatures much lower than the low 50s which is the constant temperature underground at which point even if more heat is radiating into space the Earth itself becomes a heat source.
in my country near alps we have a hole called Dolina Campoluzzo it can even reach -50Celsius
Which is why we make a cold trench that drains out in snowshelters. Also in military tents if we don't have a stove.
Simply put its called temperature inversion. Here in Alaska dropping from the mtns to the vallet it will easily be anywhere from 15 to 40 degrees colder in the winter.
Oddly, Ocala Florida is consistently several degrees colder than areas an hour to the north; now I understand why.
Those zone maps are absolutely baffling when you're colorblind.
..very intriguing..touche..i to will scurry my way through your library likewise..
Great vid! I've encountered this phenomena several times and just used my own reasoning as to the cause. Now I know the whole story, and knowing is half the battle. Yo Joe!
When I started watching, I was a little confused by your referring to these areas as “holes”, haha. I thought it was going to be about caves or something. Another point I found strange was the talk, both in the video and in some people’s comments, of people camping in these clearings. Arriving at such an area, I would automatically go to the tree line and make camp a little way into the tree cover. Why on earth would anyone want to set up a camp in the middle of a wide open area like that if there is cover nearby? That is just so weird to me. Even if I didn’t know about this temperature phenomenon I would be avoiding an area like that due to exposure to wind and visibility.
Thanks for posting this tidbit of info! People surveying the land, looking for Sasquatch hidden dens should be on the look out for spots like this! 🤔
Why would Sasquatch want to be cold though?
I went to survival school while active in the Marines. This man is spot on!
Great video bro!!!!
I love love love karst topography. It's so funky
No way! I mean it makes complete sense... in the living room it makes sense, why wouldn't it on a large scale. But I would have totally picked one of those pretty looking spots. Thanks for this!
As always brilliant work. Love the thoroughness of your content and then interesting subject matter.
While I believe that this gentleman's explanation for the formation of forest clearings by natural phenomena is partially correct, he leaves out an important non-natural factor at least as far as the origin of forest clearings in Europe is concerned. All of Europe has or has had until recently extensive farming with grazing livestock. Most of the animals used for this purpose prefer flat areas to steep slopes and mountains sides. It is therefore possible that these clearings are not only due to natural phenomena but also due to the intervention of humans who have cleared the forest in flat areas. Subsequent introduction of grazing livestock has kept these areas clear because lifestock eat tree seedlings. This also explains the strange shape of the trees at the periphery of the clearing which is the result of the feeding patterns of grazing livestock. Interesting is the photo he uses as the thumbnail for this video. It shows a hut or shed in such a clearing indicating that although those places might be very cold in winter they may also offer good grazing in summer. Since transhumance was until recently widely practiced, the livestock will be standing in a warm stable in winter, whereas the shelter shown in the thumbnail is for summer use only and/or to stow hay obtained from the clearing. "Easy" haymaking is thus another reason why farmers would prefer to clear flat ground and not slopes.
All I could think while watching this, was about a party of hikers that got stranded inexplicably in Europe. And maybe Dyatlov Pass.
Exactly what I need for my inner curious child equipped with adult mind. Thanks. Subscribed.
This happens on the school campus where I work. I got a hold of some thermostats just to prove it to some people and I have had a 10° difference and only had to walk 50 feet
Another example combined with the lake effect is Michigan being way colder than alaska
There is an area along the Eastern Sierra in California Where the Marine Corps have training exercises where it gets pretty cold.
I have camped in several places near there and got very cold at night
Never pitch in a random hole without having an exit plan
Excellent video !
Valles Caldera, a supervolcano in northern New Mexico near Los Alamos, has the same kind of climate, including the inverted tree line, for the same reason.
I'm not going to lie, it was extremely surprising to hear the San Luis Valley mentioned in this video, theres nothing down here so its like we barely exist so thanks for acknowledging our existence lmao.
This is lifesaving information, thank you.
A team of Yeagers were ordered to do campsite drills in -50 degrees here in Norway. Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Was sent to the hospital with severe frost damages. Don't play around with extreme temps guys.
Thanks, very interesting video. Talked about them on a surface level at work a bit back, but really appreciate the information. +sub
I've experienced the San Luis Valley at the coldest it gets. It's not an experience I'm in a hurry to repeat.
Great video! You sound like David Foster Wallace and I mean that as a compliment.