Question of the Week: How cold is cold?

Fall, like spring, is a time of transition between the two extreme seasons of summer and winter. During the fall, it is common to see some Wellesley students sporting shorts and tank tops and others opting for leggings, Uggs, and pea coats. Wellesley is undoubtedly a diverse campus—not only for the variety of cultures that the student body represents, but also for the diversity of weather tolerance among those students.
Wellesley, Mass. is definitely colder today than it was only a few weeks ago— but is it “cold”? How cold is cold? When will everyone agree that it’s time to pack away those shorts?
I asked this question to a sample of Wellesley students. Out of eight temperature increments (below zero, 0-10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, and 70 degrees Fahrenheit), I asked Wellesley students to choose the warmest option that they would define as “cold.” The winner? 40F. The extreme temperatures were the least popular choices, although more students chose the lowest limit (below zero degrees) than the highest (70 degrees), which nobody chose. This may be a result of the survey’s overwhelmingly American demographic (92% of survey participants were from the U.S.).
The average temperature during the winter in the U.S. is approximately 33 degrees, and half of the survey’s American participants come from the Northeast—which is not exactly the warmest spot on this planet.
While the demographics of the survey do not reflect Wellesley’s cultural diversity, the results clearly show diversity of opinion. It’s understandable that a student from Minneapolis might not feel cold until the temperature is below zero, and that a Southern Californian might choose to define “cold” as 60 degrees while a Northern Californian chooses 30 degrees.
But does it make any sense that a Mainer and an Arizonan agree that 30 degrees is cold?
Perhaps weather tolerance does not have everything to do with where you are from. Perhaps these students are wise to Wellesley’s cold weather, and are answering this question relative to the New England climate. Kristen San Miguel ’13 is from South Carolina, but she knows that the real cold is yet to come; she describes Wellesley’s current weather as “chilly.”
If no strong connection can be made between a Wellesley student’s hometown and her definition of “cold,” the general consensus is this: the worst is yet to come. Kate McConnell ’13 knows that Wellesley’s gloomy, moist winters are harsher than the dry, cold winters of her hometown, Reno, Nev. She admitted, “The only time I ever feel truly warm from about now until spring is after I’ve been in bed for a good half hour!”
Only six percent said that they need a heavy coat now. But beware: according to Gabrielle Linnell ’13, “The real cold is that crazy Antarctic blast that hits Wellesley somewhere in late November. That’s the time where, if you don’t pack extra thermal underwear under a coat resembling the kid brother’s coat in ‘A Christmas Story,’ you will lose multiple limbs.”