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Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow from the Mount Washington Observatory and today on The Weather Notebook, we're joined by commentator Chuck Kruger, who reflects on a New York winter that forever adjusted him to the cold.

"The coldest snap in my memory hit upstate New York my freshman year, 1956-57. The mercury didn't so much drop as disappear, 50 degrees below zero Fahrenheit during the day, 55 below at night. And it didn't rise above minus 50 for almost solid week.

Just stepping outside carried risk of frostbite. Wrapped in a secondhand army-navy store parka, a scarf over nose and mouth, I discovered that breath moisture immediately crystallized in the weave of my scarf so that I had to keep changing its position.

Head ducked into howling wind, I'd cross the quad, enter English Composition 101 three minutes later, panting, stamping about more to get the feeling back in my feet than to shake the snow out before it melted inside my socks. Those with beards - and few had them in those pre-flower-child days - looked like old men, graybeards at twenty.

When I didn't have classes back to back, I huddled in bed. Under old counterpanes and dingy blankets I wrote papers, memorized irregular French verbs, cussed the strict logic of improbability. During that upstate winter of 56-57, I was cold-broken. And later, living in Switzerland for 26 years and often finding myself atop Alpine peaks in the dead of winter, I never again encountered such cold."

Chuck Kruger now lives on Cape Clear, County Cork, Ireland. The Weather Notebook is underwritten by Subaru and the National Science Foundation.