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chained_bear commented on the word rule of the 40s
"Wild Bill Shannon was about to break the 'rule of the 40s.' The rule warned against running a dog team in temperatures below minus 40 degrees and above 40 degrees. At 40 degrees and over, a husky can get overheated and suffer from dehydration. At 40 below, 2 degrees below the point at which mercury freezes, there is little room for error. Even the U.S. Army stationed in the Interior village of Tanana had forbidden its soldiers from going out on patrol when the temperature dropped so low.
"Tonight, it was 50 below zero."
--Gay Salisbury and Laney Salisbury, The Cruelest Miles: The Heroic Story of Dogs and Men in a Race against an Epidemic (NY and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 2003), 139
January 24, 2017