• Jo Miran@lemmy.mlOP
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 day ago

    Obviously I figured it’d be much colder, but I’ve been in -55°f wind chills and it took me being at 8000+ feet elevation, in a northern latitude, in the peak of a record setting winter, for us to hit that. So, yeah I expected freezing temps up there, but -52.6°f is making my brain hurt. It’s just so crazy that I figured it had to include some other weather phenomenon, not just altitude.

    • MartianSands@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      40
      ·
      1 day ago

      8000 feet standing on a mountain isn’t the same as being 8000 feet above the ground. It’s likely that what you’ve experienced is some combination of air from lower altitudes being carried by wind blowing up the mountain, and the ground absorbing sunlight and warming up the air.

      Without either of those things, the temperature in open sky is likely to be colder than a mountaintop at similar altitude

        • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlOP
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          8
          arrow-down
          1
          ·
          edit-2
          1 day ago

          Oh, I’m not disagreeing, and I assume that speed was not helping, I just had no idea that it got that cold. I was hoping, if you can call it that, that the incident was due to some freak weather phenomenon

          • Archimedes@sh.itjust.works
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            2
            ·
            3 hours ago

            This is why flying is an over-rated super power. It’d be cold and wet and windy and require heavy gear. None of this undies on the outside spandex stuff.

            • Jo Miran@lemmy.mlOP
              link
              fedilink
              arrow-up
              2
              ·
              3 hours ago

              Chronicle is the only “super powers” movie to ever address this. Iron Man did too, but only when it helped the plot.

              • Archimedes@sh.itjust.works
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                2
                ·
                1 hour ago

                It’s super impractical. Also, how fast are you going to be able to fly? Because at 100km it’s so windy that after an hour you’d be sore from the resistance. It’s more comfortable to drive lol. Probably faster too. It really only has a local use case. Trans Atlantic for example would take days and suck beyond comprehension. Also, it’s boring as hell up there.

                • just_an_average_joe@lemmy.dbzer0.com
                  link
                  fedilink
                  English
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  8 minutes ago

                  I wanna counter your point a bit, like if im the only one flying it would suck. But like imagine if there were oasis in the middle for flying people. You would plan your journey from europe to south asia, sure it would take a week or maybe multiple, buy you’ll be stopping at different towns, meeting the locals and enjoying their food.

                  Imagine there could be like seasonal migrations when the weather is too cold or too hot. And then there would be nomads, tellong everyone about their nomad lifestyles.

          • remon@ani.social
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            16
            ·
            edit-2
            1 day ago

            The speed is actually helping keeping their air plane warmer due to aerodynamic heating.

    • shalafi@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      19 hours ago

      I was once on a fancy airliner that had readouts on the seat backs. One thing you could see was temperature. I believe it was -175F or so. This was also over Florida BTW. Only reason I know about this!

      • Hacksaw@lemmy.ca
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        18 hours ago

        That’s an erroneous readout. Modern aircraft have various limits on air temperature, but none in the negative triple digits.