Baby it's cold outside. So cold that many schools across the state took a little extra time to warm up the school buses, and doors opened late. An N&O reporter went on a ride-along to with the Durham Rescue Mission to find people living in the woods.
It rarely gets this cold in here in the Carolinas, so we took to Twitter to see what people are saying.
I don't mind cold weather. I do mind when it's 73° on Sunday and then 18° by Wednesday. Summer or Winter, make up your mind North Carolina.
— Haley Sohasky (@haleydbennett) January 8, 2015
Every time I think it's cold I remember being submerged under North Carolina Rapids in March in a frozen wetsuit
— Jenna McLaughlin (@JennaMC_Laugh) January 8, 2015
Wait. What? We contacted Jenna McLaughlin and asked her to tell us the story behind the tweet. She says that a couple of years ago she was part of an outdoors program through Johns Hopkins University, and they came to North Carolina to kayak. It was March.
"That was the coldest I have ever been. I fell out of the boat," remembers McLaughlin. She wasn't in the water for long, but it was freezing. She was drenched, and the group still had four or five more hours left on the water that day.
"We would get out of our boat to dance and jump around" to to try and keep the blood flowing, McLaughlin says, adding that some on the trip were trained to recognize the signs of hypothermia. They knew that shivering and talking were good signs.
Even worse than that original dunk in the water?
"Every morning you would wake up and your wetsuit would be frozen solid."
How do you get back in to a wetsuit that is frozen solid?
"You just do."
McLaughlin now works in Washington, DC where lots of people are complaining about the cold. This morning she remembered that North Carolina trip:
And then I think about the fact that I'm not a Syrian refugee living in a tent fearing for my life, and then I feel silly about being cold.
— Jenna McLaughlin (@JennaMC_Laugh) January 8, 2015
Tell us your #ColdInCarolina story. Tweet or e-mail.
