Hope you had a great weekend! We got a few inches of snow here, inspiring today’s story ❄ — Dan
The Accidental Igloo That Saved a Life
On February 17, 2012, two snowmobilers were passing through a wooded area near Umeå, Sweden, traversing roughly 70 cm (more than two feet) of snow. They came across what looked like a crashed car, surrounded by deep snow. Fearing that someone may have been in an accident and required immediate medical help, the pair began to dig the car out. And they discovered a shockingly thin man, asleep in a sleeping bag, but — barely — alive.
The man they discovered was a 44-year-old named Peter Skyllberg. Almost two months earlier, on December 19, 2011, Skyllberg seemingly disappeared off the face of the Earth. But it was unclear if anyone noticed — there were no search parties sent out to find his whereabouts.
Skyllberg mostly performed odd jobs for a living and very often lived out of his car, and it’s likely that he was planning to do the latter on the night of December 19. He probably parked on the side of the road, got into the sleeping bag he kept in his vehicle, and went to sleep. Unfortunately, when he awoke, he was trapped: a huge snowstorm made it impossible for him to fully open his car doors, effectively burying him in his vehicle. Helpless, he had to wait for the snow to melt a bit so he could escape.
But as the hours turned into days, and then into weeks, that melt never came. Skyllberg’s fate seemed sealed. He had no food to eat and could only drink by scraping a bit of snow off the roof of his car. If he didn’t starve, hypothermia would surely set in.
And yet, 60 days later, he was still alive — because his car, effectively, turned into an igloo, keeping him just warm enough. IFLScience explains:
Even in the midst of sub-zero temperatures, igloos can be surprisingly cozy inside because the internal heat (provided by body heat and, if you’re lucky, a fire or heater) is retained thanks to the insulation provided by walls. The man’s car, covered in a hefty layer of snow, was effectively acting like a blanket.
The source of heat was his metabolism, though it must have been minimal. Body heat is produced through metabolic processes whereby the body converts food into energy, and as a byproduct, heat is generated. Since the man hadn’t eaten properly for weeks, his metabolism would have been very “slow,” yet it clearly pumped out enough heat to keep him alive, like a tiny candle in the dark.
(If you want a deeper dive on how igloos work, here’s a good five-minute video.)
Doctors said that had he been discovered even a few days later, his fate would have likely been different. As one told the Guardian, “two months was at the ‘upper limit’ of what a person would be able to survive without food,” and Skyllberg was at that point. But miraculously, Skyllberg was discovered just in time. He was treated at a local hospital and made a full recovery.
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More About Snow
Today’s Bonus fact: Every once in a while, you’ll get a snowstorm that also has thunder and lightning. It’s called “thundersnow” and it’s very rare. How rare? It’s been known to get meteorologists very excited when it happens. (Here’s a video of Jim Cantore, a meteorologist for the Weather Channel, doing exactly just that over a two-minute montage, and he even compares it to winning the lottery.)
From the Archives: There's Snow Better Way to Measure: How do we measure the depth of snowfalls? It’s a team effort — and you can help.
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And thanks! — Dan