Well, that seems reasonable. In most cold situations, my hands tend to stay warmer than the people with me. The only reason I can figure is I've had to use them since I was a kid in pretty cold conditions. Winter fishing, making firewood et al. occupied a lot of my time as a kid, and probably conditioned me to deal with the cold better than some. We never used gloves much, and making snowballs would overwhelm me as much as the next kid, but moderate exposure never bothered me much.

Climbing towers to fix antenna systems is likewise cold. In fact, most of my radio repair time (my other career) has been outside handling cold metal and tools and such. It can get mighty cold in the bucket 40 feet up with a north wind in mid December, and splicing coax fittings can not be done with gloves on.

What I have noticed is now that I have arthritis in both hands, the cold doesn't sting so much as make my hands "freeze up". Last year I had to just about pry my fingers open to let go of a screwdriver. It ends up I have to repeatedly clench and unclench my fists to get them to start moving again proper. There is a noticable ache, not something I'd experienced before, and not the biting cold that I felt when I've exposed my hands in excess in days past.

I've also learned to do mental exercises that help my extremities recover from cold quicker. The will of the mind, properly trained, is a powerful tool to control the body. A focused effort, I've discovered, can make fingers and toes warm up, though undoubtedly at the expense of losing core temperature, or increasing metabolic rate and consuming energy stores. Still, for specific tasks, you may need to make certain sacrifices to be able to function as needed. Obviously this effect is relatively subtle, because I doubt I could overcome hypothermia in extreme exposure. I'm not a guru. <img src="/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />