Free Republic

A powerful arctic blast swept into the U.S. Northeast on Friday, threatening to push temperatures to record lows in many spots, including New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, where the wind chill could drop to -110 degrees Fahrenheit ... ... Boston and Worcester, the two largest cities in New England, were among the school districts to close on Friday as administrators worried about the risk of hypothermia and frostbite as children waited for buses or walked to school. The bitter cold in the forecast forced a rare closing of a floating museum that presents a daily re-enactment of the 1773 Boston Tea...

TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — An 83-year-old Port Charlotte man who was trapped under a golf cart for several hours was rescued by an unlikely duo — two Waste Management workers. According to a release from the company, driver Alex Galarza and assistant driver Paulino Ortega were driving along their regular route Monday when they noticed the man trapped under a golf cart at the end of a Port Charlotte driveway. The workers immediately dialed 911 and started providing first aid treatment while authorities were en route. In talking to the man, the workers noticed he was showing signs of hypothermia...

Yan Daixiang squinted through dense, freezing fog as she struggled to make out her surroundings. Runners were scattered everywhere—off the trail, in ravines, on the other side of the mountain—dotting the hillside in brightly colored athletic gear. It was hard to tell loose clothing and people apart. People trudged in every direction, struggling against freezing wind and rain. Others huddled around bushes or boulders. Some runners passed Yan, heading back down the mountain. They’d tried to reach the race’s third checkpoint at mile 17, but failed. They were retreating now, back to the second checkpoint, to drop out. “It’s way...

NEW YORK (AP) — A man who drove off the road in this week’s snowstorm spent 10 hours trapped in his car after a passing plow and rapidly accumulating snow buried it, finally managing to get a 911 call through and being rescued in the nick of time by a New York state trooper. Kevin Kresen, 58, of Candor, drove off the road in the town of Owego and became “plowed in by a truck,” state police said. “If he was in there for another hour his body temperature would have gone lower, and I’m convinced he wouldn’t have made...

Two Chinese nationals in their early 20s have been found dead at the site of a 1973 plane crash in southern Iceland. Police said the man and the woman were found near the Sólheimasandur crash site, which draws tourists. A police spokesman told the BBC a post-mortem would take place early next week to establish the causes of death. Officers had not found any signs of a "criminal act" by a third party, he said, adding that the bodies showed signs of hypothermia. In 1973, a US military plane crash-landed on the beach at Sólheimasandur. No one was killed. The...

You may be bundled up during the polar vortex that’s sweeping the nation, but for some outdoor enthusiasts, it was the perfect temperature for this year’s Arrowhead 135 ultramarathon. The a race is purposely held in late January or early February each year to line up with what they hope is the coldest temperatures of the year. It runs roughly 135 miles between International Falls, Minnesota, to Lake Vermillion in Minnesota along the arrowhead State Trail. This year, they were right on the money, as temperatures dropped as low as -30 degrees Fahrenheit. “It’s supposed to be coupled with this...

The current state of this technology is really promising. They use a technique called therapeutic hypothermia, which lowers the temperature of a person by a few degrees...With the lowered temperature, a human’s metabolism decreases and they fall unconscious into a torpor. ... A few years ago, SpaceWorks Enterprises delivered a report to NASA on how they could use this therapeutic hypothermia for long duration spaceflight within the Solar System. Currently, a trip to Mars takes about 6-9 months. And during that time, the human passengers are going to be using up precious air, water and food. But in this torpor...

Even the New York Times, one of the biggest sources of fake news on anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming, or AGW, occasionally gets facts straight and the story right. Or, at least, partially straight and mostly right. Such is the case with the Times’ recent stories by Jane E. Brody on December 19 and December 26 regarding the death toll risks from cold weather versus hot weather. In her December 19 column, titled, “Beware: Winter Is Coming,” Ms. Brody cited an important study from The Lancet, the British medical journal, that found “Cold kills”  as she put it — and at a...

RESCUE It happened in an instant. I dropped my canoe paddle in the lake and as it started to float away, I instinctively reached over the side of the canoe to grab it. Bad move. In the blink of an eye I was dumped into the middle of Nuttings Lake in December with no life jacket. As I struggled to right my canoe and retrieve fishing rods and tackle boxes, the numbing cold water brought me to a stark reality. The clock was ticking. I had little time. I had to make decisions fast. My first thought was to un-swamp...

The rules of how to treat cardiac arrest are being re-written at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. Technology, new drug treatments, conventional CPR and the use of hypothermia are now being coordinated with great affect - in one case reviving a man who'd been clinically dead for more than an hour. (Video and transcript available at link)

A secret love tryst in a snowstorm ended in tragedy when a cheating husband froze to death as he and his mistress cuddled together in a car, an inquest heard today. The 29-year-old died from hypothermia as temperatures plunged to minus 10 degrees Celsius as the couple sheltered in a garage in Luton, Bedfordshire. Syed Hussain was secretly dating a girlfriend after being unhappy in a forced marriage arranged by his family. A coroner heard that Syed died during the big freeze in December when he and his mistress, Shabana Akhtar, had a secret rendezvous just before Christmas. the couple,...

Rescuers searched Thursday for a 16-year-old Southern California girl feared missing while attempting a solo sail around the world. Family spokesman Christian Pinkston said the search began for Abby Sunderland somewhere between Africa and Australia after emergency beacons were activated overnight and there was a loss of communication.

The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency wanted to use cold water to soften up al-Qaeda suspects, so it read tracts by Canadian experts. The research - with titles like Immersion into Cold Water and Survival in Cold Waters - was written with the intent of improving the odds for sailors and fishermen lost at sea. The CIA accessed it to determine how far its agents could go with "high-value detainees" in secret prisons.... "Water dousing is intended to weaken the detainee's overall resistance posture and persuade him to co-operate with interrogators," reads one of the CIA memos justifying the practice. It...

BAY CITY, Mich. -- Officials in central Michigan say a 93-year-old man who owed more than $1,000 in unpaid electric bills froze to death inside his home -- where the municipal power company had restricted his use of electricity. Neighbors and friends of Marvin Schur want answers as to how this could happen. “Now that we do know it was hypothermia, there’s a whole bunch of feelings that I’ve got going through me,” said Jim Herndon, a neighbor of Schur’s. “There’s anger, for the city and the electrical company.” Bay City officials said changes are on the way in an...

Starting on Jan. 1, New York City ambulances will take many cardiac arrest patients only to hospitals that use a delicate cooling therapy believed to reduce the chances of brain damage and increase the chances of survival, even if it means bypassing closer emergency rooms. The move by the city’s Fire Department and Emergency Medical Service, after a year of preparation, indicates a shift away from the prevailing view among emergency workers and the public that how fast critically ill patients reach the hospital is more important than which hospital treats them. It amounts to an endorsement by the Bloomberg...

AP Medical Writer Doctors are following the playbook in treating Buffalo Bills football player Kevin Everett's severe spinal cord injury except in one notable regard: pumping icy cold saline into his veins to try to prevent further damage. Although the treatment is experimental, it is more science than science fiction, and also is being tried on stroke and brain injury patients. "There are compelling reasons why one might want to try it" in a case like this, said Dr. Gary Steinberg, chairman of neurosurgery at Stanford University. He had no role in Everett's case but has tested the body cooling...

A Brooklyn man froze to death in his car after he and his wife spent 32 hours stranded in below zero temperatures upstate. The couple was driving home from a wedding in Montreal when their car crashed off Interstate-87 around 1 a.m. Thursday. Barbara Langner had tried to call for help with her cell phone but couldn't get service. Family members reported them missing, and state police found the couple Friday in their Lincoln Town Car in North Hudson, about 90 miles north of Albany. When authorities found the couple, Alfred Langner – who was 63 – had died of...

It starts with mumbling and stumbling. Then come violent shivers and then, paradoxically, a false sense of warmth that makes some people strip their clothes off. Eventually, they may curl into a fetal position as their muscles go rigid, their skin goes waxy, and the heart slows down, then stops. Whether two climbers missing on Mount Hood for more than a week are still alive is not clear. But if they are somehow still hanging on in the brutal cold and howling winds, perhaps hunkered down in a snow cave, they may be going through what veteran climbers say is...

<p>May 23, 2005 - For 24 hours, Hamilton Loeb lay unconscious inside a cold blue suit that put his brain on ice. Four times, his heart had stopped beating and he was shocked back to life. Then doctors essentially refrigerated him, in a bid to avert the brain damage that too often cripples survivors of cardiac arrest.</p>

Woman Dies In Cold On Her Porch Bitter Temperatures Blamed For Death POSTED: 4:00 PM CST January 6, 2004 UPDATED: 5:21 PM CST January 6, 2004 OMAHA, Neb. -- An Omaha woman died of hypothermia overnight Tuesday in the bitter cold weather gripping the city. Francis Moore, 72, was found lying on the porch of her home at 2447 Pinkney St. A woman was dropping her child off Tuesday morning for daycare when she found Moore on the enclosed porch of her home. She told 911 operators that Moore wasn't wearing shoes. Police believe she may have stepped outside...