Cold, then and now.

 Crow Indians, early 20th Century.

There's a really arctic cold snap predicted for Wyoming later this week and its 17F right now.  Bitter, bitter cold. The paper has the temperatures regularly dropping down below 0F.  Some folks I've spoken to, who must get their weather report from elsewhere, have even more dire weather reports.  I've heard predictions of temperatures reaching -21F.  I've personally seen temperatures here below -40F, so it isn't impossible.

So, what will occur is that we'll plug in our vehicles and keep the temperature up a bit at night.  And we may run facets at night as well.  Most folks will run their vehicles awhile in the morning before heading out to work, to let the cab heater (or whatever we call them) heat up a bit.

We'll also worry about the heat bill. Those of us with electric heat (such as me) will particularly worry about that.

So that's what we do in 2013.  And frankly that's not really any different than what we did a half century ago in 1963.  Cars seemed to be more sensitive to extreme cold at the time, but I don't remember much else being different.

But what about 1913?

In 1913, in most places, heat was by coal or wood.  I suppose folks with coal furnaces, which would have been most folks, made sure they had a plenty of coal in the coal bin. That houses had coal bins is probably something most folks don't know now, but I can remember being a bit fascinated with a house that one of my aunts and uncles had which had a heavy iron door for a coal chute.  The house, of course, had long prior been updated and didn't use coal.

Coal burns dirty, and smelly.  Even really high quality coal has a distinct petroleum smell.  A lot of people do not recognize that smell at all anymore, as they've never smelled it, but every now and then you'll run across somebody who heats even now with coal, almost always as an auxiliary to their main heat.  Towns must have smelt like and had a layer of smoke over them all winter.  This must have been particularly true during heavy cold snaps, as that almost always causes a temperature inversion, at least around here.

 Coal furnace.  I've never seen one.

Even now, where people burn a lot of wood for heat, and in some places in the west that's common, you'll often smell wood smoke during the winter, and that's just from auxiliary use as a rule.  This became more common in the 1970s and 1980s than previously, reflecting the nationwide rise in fuel costs.  A quarter century ago while a student in Laramie I lived in a rental house where we did that.  We largely heat the house with a wood burning stove and with wood that we'd cut in the Snowy Range on a Forest Service permit.

 World War One vintage poster urging the early ordering of winter coal.

Of course, this all deals with houses. What about office buildings, or even substantial apartment buildings?  I know that heat was provided via a boiler, but what was the fuel?  Oil?  I can't imagine that a building like the Con Roy Building, for example, was heated through burning coal. And it's been around since 1917.  Plenty of substantial buildings in the west are older than that.

 World War One vintage poster urging coal conservation.

In 1913 the majority of people walked to work, but cars were around to be sure, with a majority of those cars no doubt being Model T Fords.  I don't know how hard to start they were in cold weather, but they started with a hand crank, so I'm guess that they wouldn't have been easy to start.

Walking, of course, implied heavy dress, in weather like we're speaking of, and frankly the winters of that era imply heavy dress in general,  walking and being out in the cold on a regular basis will mean that the person who engages in it will dress warmly.  Indeed, people who work outdoors a lot will tend to wear warmer clothes all year long, rather than the current trend, for our indoor age, of people wearing shorts in the middle of the winter.

 Jack and Etta Johnson in winter finery, 1910.

Winter clothing of the period was heavier, sometimes considerably heavier, than now.  All the modern synthetics that most people sport in winter to some degree did not exist, and therefore natural fibers, and furs, were what were used to avoid freezing.  Heavier dress even applied to some extent indoors, as buildings were simply not heated as well as presently, and were sometimes fairly cold even under the best of circumstances.

German soldier, 1914 or 1915.

Postscript

Today provides a good example.  I got u pat 05:00, it was was -1F.  I turned up the electric heat a bit.  What would I have done had it been 1913?  Threw some logs in an iron stove?  Checked the coal burning stove?  I'm not sure.

I went and made coffee with an electric drop coffee maker.  I know I wouldn't have done that in 1913.  I would have had to put some logs in the kitchen stove and boiled coffee on the stove top.  And I had cereal for breakfast, which I likely would not have done in 1913, unless it was oatmeal, which I would have had to cook on the stove top again.

Any my truck is warming up outside.  If it were 1913, I doubt I would have driven downtown, I probably would have walked.  Had I needed an automobile for something, it probably would have been a Model T, which no doubt is okay in snow, but not the same as my Dodge D3500.  And I would have had to hand crank it in subzero weather, which would have been iffy.

Postscript II

Or what about a day like today.  -22F when I got up at 05:00.

Postscript III

One thing that weather like this serves to illustrate is how much easier cars have gotten to start in cold weather.

Even up to the 1970s, weather like this required that a car with a substantial engine have its block heater plugged in overnight.  Every vehicle I've ever owned has had one, but frankly it has to get this cold before I plug them in anymore.  They just don't need it as they'll start in very cold weather.

This is particularly true of diesels.  I have a diesel now, and I've had one made in the 1990s before it. They both start in very cold weather.  When its this cold, I use the block heater. But at one time people wouldn't even buy diesels in this region because they'd freeze up, sometimes on the highway, during winter.

Also, it's interesting to note how much better insulated houses are. This started to be emphasized in the 1970s during the country's first energy crisis.  The cries has waxed and waned, but the emphasis on insulation has not, and modern houses are very well insulated as a rule.  Not all, of course, but most are.

The degree to which this has changed is perhaps best illustrated by my wife's belief that we need to run the water at night if its really freezing, which happens to this level a couple of times a year.  The only places I ever lived in that required that were in Laramie, and were very poorly insulated.  Here, I've never done that, and we've never needed to.  It still, however, makes her uncomfortable.  But then the farm house she lived in was probably built in the teens.