Coldest temp?

Hello @VeronicaLake12 and welcome to CivilWarTalk - the best place on the internet for Civil War discussion.

Sit tight and someone will be along with an answer regarding the coldest temperature for an actual battle. In the meantime, you might enjoy reading about some snowball fights that occurred during the American Civil War. If you search for "snowball" you will find tons more of these stories on the forum.

https://civilwartalk.com/threads/one-of-the-biggest-snow-ball-fights-in-history.153779/
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/the-late-march-dalton-snowball-fight.132963/
https://civilwartalk.com/threads/ci...owball-battle-of-rappahannock-academy.127711/
 
Welcome from the Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing Forum and North Mississippi! I have a little quote from a Rebel who had 4 years experience with the weather, hope it helps you.
Regards
David

"We bivouac on the cold and hard-frozen ground, and when we walk about, the echo of our footsteps sound like the echo of a tombstone. The earth is crusted with snow, and the wind from the northwest is piercing our bones. We can see our ragged soldiers, with the sunken cheeks and famine-glistened eyes."
- Sam Watkins, Co. H., First Tennessee Regiment, December, 1864
 
Greetings from Germany and welcome aboard from The Traveler's Companion and Other Notable Biographies forum! :smile:

The Battle of Fredericksburg on December 13, 1862 is said to have been quite cold. Here's an article about weather during the Civil War, and it says that
Weather records from the war were collected by the Smithsonian Institute and Army Signal Service until the creation of the Weather Bureau in 1891.
Haven't found these weather records online but maybe someone else will. :smile:
 
Welcome from Missouri. Honestly, I am not sure that temps could be reliably measured during the CW. I think we'd do better with anecdotal evidence about the thickness of ice on rivers and ponds, and things of that nature.
 
They say it was the snow and very cold weather that kept my Dad alive when he was wounded in Germany during WW2. It was like being packed in ice.
. Otherwise he'd have bled to death. Frostbite would cost him later though.
I'm sure soldiers from many wars faced such ordeals.
 
Just curious if any Civil War soldiers faced the cold of what was faced at Valley Forge or Stalingrad?

The soldiers trained at Valley Forge but did not fight a battle there. If we include soldiers in winter camps, then yes, some soldiers were in winter camps during cold periods. Both the guards and prisoners of war at Camp Douglas in Chicago suffered through a particularly cold winter.
 
The soldiers trained at Valley Forge but did not fight a battle there. If we include soldiers in winter camps, then yes, some soldiers were in winter camps during cold periods. Both the guards and prisoners of war at Camp Douglas in Chicago suffered through a particularly cold winter.
Thanks! I will research possible accounts of life at Camp Douglas.
 
Prairie Grove was fought in Dec and it was near freezing at night, wounded would crawl into haystacks for warmth

And if going by prisons, Rock Island had a hard winter also
 
Somewhere I have read about a picket who was found frozen to death while still standing. Here a few miles from the Wilderness/Chancellorsville battlefield we will have subzero every few years and single digit almost every year (5 day before yesterday). From reading local first hand accounts is seems that it was a little colder during the war. Unfortunately, I can't find any records with actual temperatures.
 
Thanks for the reply, VeronicaLake. Also my Dad had just gone through weeks of Jungle trainning. His regiment was destined for the tropic Pacific but the "brains" sent them to frozen Germany instead. I'm sure they had mixups like that back then too.
 
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