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Minus 23°C? Bah!
Chill sets in after long period of record heat, but what is really considered cold in Svalbard?

Mathias Hamar, 5, slides down the skateboard ramp next to the youth club while braving chilly temperatures and strong winds this week along with his sister, Melina, 2, and father, Peter.

Temperatures consider brutal in most of the world are actually a secondary consideration when determining if it's a crummy day in Svalbard. But at some point they have to, um, drop to the forefront.

So how low do they have to go?

Lower than those bringing this winter's most frigid temperatures this week, it seems. The thermometer bottomed out at minus 23.3° Celsius as of press time, with a wind chill well below minus 40.

A few more people stayed inside and there some nuisances, but the above-ground water pipes generally kept flowing and dozens of snowmobilers found themselves submitting to sobriety checks by police.

A bit of a shock, perhaps, after record and near-record high temperatures the previous three months, including an unprecedented amount of rain in January. But if the humidity is what makes heat insufferable, in the dry and often-sunny Arctic the wind is what people frequently call the true menace.

"It can be minus 25 and no wind, and it feels fine," said Preben Andreassen, a driver for Longyearbyen Taxi. "It can be minus 10 with a lot of wind and it's too cold."

Some Longyearbyen residents said they were keeping a wary eye on their water pipes during the cold stretch. But truly taxing some of the city's facilities means approaching the all-time record of minus 46.3° Celsius set in March 1986.

"Problems with frozen pipes increase at minus 20°C and the wind, but I will not say that there is extreme cold until it is minus 35°C or minus 40°C," wrote Håkan Eriksson, an operations engineer for the city, in an e-mail interview.

The pipes carrying hot water that also heat some homes and businesses are the most vulnerable part of Longyearbyen's infrastructure during cold spells, Eriksson wrote.

"To avoid it there are installed heating cables or (antifreeze) loops" in addition to protective insulation, he added. "This frost protection works very well, but if the cable stops working it may freeze if there is little circulation in the pipe."

One of the most vulnerable locations is Longyearbyen School, where pipes occasionally freeze at minus 23.3° Celsius or below, said Ivar Undheim, administrator of the Longyearbyen Council. He said a 1.8 million kroner upgrade is planned, but cannot take place until summer.

As for getting out and about, batteries might go dead in cars not plugged into block heaters, but the roads and runways are built for extreme-weather travel.

Heating cables protect water pipes in Longyearbyen from freezing during intense cold, but those at Longyearbyen School are considered vulnerable. A 1.8 million kroner upgrade is planned this year.

"I don't think minus 20, 25 is cold," said Svalbard Airport Manager Ole Rambech, "When we constructed the airport we designed it to minus 40."

"When we do the surface on the runway the asphalt there are different mixtures," he said. "Avinor once made a mistake on the mainland. When they had a really cold night the asphalt would crack. We have a mixtures that gives flexibility into the asphalt so it can cope with cold temperatures."

An upgrade to the terminal completed in 2007 is designed with insulation and heating system for similar temperatures, Rambech said. But passengers can't escape the elements entirely – they have to walk outside between the plane and terminal because aerobridges can't reliably link the two.

"It is blowing so much up here the usual systems will give us lots of trouble," Rambech said.

Svalbard's streets are paved with the same asphalt used at the airport. In fact, "the roads are far more stable in the frost," Undheim said. When things begin to thaw is when cracks and potholes appear.

One place that did experience problems was Svea where a day of production was lost due to the water supply freezing, wrote Leiv Sanden, manager at Mine 7 for Store Norske, in an e-mail interview.

"In Mine 7 it can cause problems if the cold weather is above minus 20 for three or four days," he wrote. But the problem of frozen water is temporary since they have received funding to improve insulation.

"Another problem is that there may be problems starting the coal cars, which run the coal from the mine and the delivery location," Sanden wrote.

Tourists might think the cold is more than enough to overcome during excursions. But some who tried warming up their spirits too much, so to speak, found themselves back indoors as police conducting spot checks Tuesday morning stopped 10 snowscooter drivers for driving while legally intoxicated.

February is historically the coldest month in Longyearbyen with an average temperature of minus 16.2° Celsius, followed by March at minus 15.7° Celsius according to the Norwegian Meteorological Institute. Even with the current cold spell, the average temperature of minus 9.8° Celsius during the past 30 days is 6.3 degrees above normal.

Temperatures have been well above average during most of the dark season. November's average was minus 1.9° Celsius compared to a historical normal of minus 10.3° Celsius, December's average was minus 5.5° Celsius compared to a normal of minus 13.4° Celsius and January's average was minus 7.2° Celsius compared to an average of minus 15.3° Celsius.

An above-average spell of precipation, including 69 millimeters in January that featured record rainfall, ended this month with only a slight measureable amount compared to a historical average of 19 millimeters.

Published in the Feb. 23, 2010, print edition.

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