Highways closed in Minnesota on Monday because it was so cold, and trains didn't run in Chicago. Numerous school districts in the Midwest even cancelled classes. The windchill this week in Chicago hit -35 degrees Fahrenheit, and the Dakotas faced wind gusts of up to 60 miles per hour. Even the South is feeling the cold.
But those conditions sound balmy compared to those in Antarctica.
Newly examined data from a NASA satellite shows that East Antarctica hit a record for the coldest temperature on Earth: -135.8 degrees Fahrenheit in August 2010. It came almost as close, a freezing -135.3 degrees Fahrenheit, in July 2013. That's so cold it hurts to breathe, Ted Scambos, an ice scientist at the National Snow and Ice Data Center, told the AP. Scambos added that scientists in the South Pole sometimes dash out naked in -100 degree temperatures -- so cold that humans can only survive in it for about three minutes.