Tuesday morning, when we started FirstNews at 5:00 a.m., it was about 50 degrees around town. By noon, the temps had tumbled into the teens. That led to the following e-mail:

"How cold does it have to get to be colder than a well-digger's aft section and have we made it yet?"

The question comes from the old phrase "It was colder than a well-digger's hinder." The word "hinder" is optional. I looked it up...the phrase, that is. Apparently, in the old days, when wells were dug by hand, about ten feet below the surface, the temperature would hit 53 degrees and stay there. So, it doesn't take much to get colder than that particular part of a well-digger's anatomy. This e-mail got me thinking about other phrases I've heard used in describing ultra-cold weather.

For example, my dad used to refer to brass monkeys to describe the chill. A singer named Yogi Yorgesson did a version of Jingle Bells that included the line "I wouldn't make brass monkeys ride in a one horse open sleigh." You had to know the whole phrase to get the joke. I'm not going to fill in the blanks. It's a little racy. At least, when I was a kid, I thought it was down-right naughty. Times have probably changed.

There are plenty of these phrases out there:

It is so cold...

...that politicians have their hands in their own pockets.

...that hitchhikers are showing photos of their thumbs.

...that streakers are just showing snapshots. (Kids, ask your parents what "streakers" were. Oh, and what "snapshots" were, too.)

...that chickens were actually lining up to get into KFC.

...that Richard Simmons wore long pants.

...that the Tidy-Bowl man was ice-fishing.

...that I saw a robin defrosting his worm.

I'm sure you've heard plenty of them. Sometimes weather dorks like me, start saying the same phrase over and over. For example, during our last cold spell, an e-mailer told me that if I said "bitter cold one more time, I'll take my cat off the TV and throw it at you!" I switched to bone-chilling for awhile. I was going to use "cold as Blue Blazes" but I have no idea what that means. Of course, that never stopped me before.

Before we leave these icy comments, let me mention another e-mail I got after our near-blizzard like conditions on Tuesday. A viewer wanted to tell me about a book called The Children's Blizzard. It is about the killer storm that hit the upper Midwest in the late 1800s. My daughter has read the book and I've read parts of it. It is a very compelling, sad story. Thursday may just be a good day for a good read.

Now, I've got to go find a well-digger and a brass monkey to help me with my forecast.