Because altitude. Much like how Mt Kilimanjaro has snow on it despite being close to the equator.
this post was submitted on 02 Nov 2026
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Obviously I figured it'd be much colder, but I've been in -55°f wind chills and it took me being at 8000+ feet elevation, in a northern latitude, in the peak of a record setting winter, for us to hit that. So, yeah I expected freezing temps up there, but -52.6°f is making my brain hurt. It's just so crazy that I figured it had to include some other weather phenomenon, not just altitude.
I was once on a fancy airliner that had readouts on the seat backs. One thing you could see was temperature. I believe it was -175F or so. This was also over Florida BTW. Only reason I know about this!
What do you figure the wind chill of a few hundred mph may be?
Irrelevant to those of metal blood.
8000 feet standing on a mountain isn't the same as being 8000 feet above the ground. It's likely that what you've experienced is some combination of air from lower altitudes being carried by wind blowing up the mountain, and the ground absorbing sunlight and warming up the air.
Without either of those things, the temperature in open sky is likely to be colder than a mountaintop at similar altitude
Also, aircraft go far higher than 8000 feet. Crusing altitudes can be more like 20,000 or 30,000
Oh, I'm not disagreeing, and I assume that speed was not helping, I just had no idea that it got that cold. I was hoping, if you can call it that, that the incident was due to some freak weather phenomenon
They were warned about problematic weather :(
The speed is actually helping keeping their air plane warmer due to aerodynamic heating.
Every 1000ft you go up, the temperature drops by about 2c
Space is very cold. It's -270something C. The temperature on Earth is much higher. The rays that make it through to our atmosphere bounce off the ground, warming it up from the bottom up. That's why you need a jacket when you climb up a mountain because it's getting colder the higher you go. Imagine a mountain higher than anything we have. Eventually, you'll get to -50 C.
While on the same machine, the turbine blades that melt at 1250 degrees operate at 1500 degrees.
It's all magic
wat?
As a professional aircraft mechanic, I can confirm. It's all magic
Because that's about how cold the air is at cruising altitude.
If you’re talking about the Learjet that crashed (RIP), I think it was cruising around 37-41k feet. I don’t know the scientific reason for why it’s so cold up there.
The ground is opaque and dense so sunlight heats it effectively and it holds onto that heat well. Air is transparent and not very dense so it doesn't heat well nor does it hold that heat.
Warm places are warm near the ground, but as you gain altitude it becomes cold quickly no matter where you are.