Before the First Cold Snap: The Winter Injuries to Know
Frostbite, hypothermia and carbon monoxide arrive with the first real cold, not the worst of it. Who gets hurt in an Alberta winter, and what this week covers.
Jarrett Chisholm, ACP · October 26, 2026
Where this is taught: Remote First Aid and Wilderness First Aid.
The first hard cold of the season catches more people than the worst cold of January does. By January everyone has their boots, their block heater cord and their habits. In late October, people are still walking the dog in running shoes, driving the highway without a blanket in the car, and working outside in a jacket that was fine last week.
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Early morning on an Alberta job site or rural roadside, low sun. A worker in a hard hat, hi-vis parka and scarf, frost visibly forming on the scarf and eyebrows, breath steaming. Tight-to-medium framing, cold blue light with warm sunrise edge. No injury shown.
Alt text ready: “An outdoor worker in a hard hat and high-visibility jacket at dawn, frost on his scarf and eyebrows, breath visible in the cold air.”
This week is about the injuries that come with the cold, written now rather than during it. By the time a cold snap is in the forecast, it is too late to put together a car kit or learn what frostbite looks like. The time to know is before.
Alberta is well placed to take cold seriously. Most people here have a story about a frozen ear, a stranded car or a cold night that went worse than planned. What is less common is knowing what to actually do when it happens to someone else.
It is not only people in the backcountry
When people picture hypothermia, they picture a lost hiker or someone who fell through ice. Those happen, but most cold injury in a province like this is closer to home and less dramatic. It happens in parking lots, bus shelters, ditches, job sites and back yards.
The people most at risk are often the ones least able to notice it in themselves. Cold slows thinking before it does much else, so a person who is getting dangerously cold is often the last to realise it. Anyone who is looking after others in the cold, whether that is a crew lead, a parent or a coach, needs to be watching for it on their behalf. cold-season first aid training for an outdoor crew, delivered on site.
Who gets hurt by the cold most often:
- Older adults, whose bodies make and hold heat less well, especially after a fall outdoors or in a cold house.
- People who have been drinking, because alcohol dulls the sense of cold and impairs judgement.
- Outdoor workers on long shifts: construction, utilities, oil and gas, agriculture and transport.
- Drivers stranded on rural highways, often dressed for the heated car rather than the weather outside it.
- People without stable housing, for whom a cold night is not optional.
- Children, who lose heat quickly and do not always say they are cold.
The injuries, briefly
Frostbite is tissue freezing, usually in the fingers, toes, ears, nose and cheeks. It ranges from frostnip, which is painful but leaves no lasting damage, to deep frostbite that can cost fingers or toes. The early signs are easy to miss because the area goes numb.
Hypothermia is the whole body cooling below the temperature it needs to work properly. It starts with shivering and clumsiness and, as it deepens, brings confusion, sleepiness and eventually unconsciousness. It does not need extreme cold. Wet clothing and wind can cause it well above freezing.
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four-ways-the-body-loses-heat-diagram.svg
A simple outline of a person lying on the ground with four labelled arrows leaving the body: radiation to cold air above, conduction into the ground below, convection from wind across the body, and evaporation from wet clothing. Plain-language labels (cold air, cold ground, wind, wet clothes) with the technical term small underneath. Delta gold arrows on charcoal.
Alt text ready: “Diagram of a person showing four ways the body loses heat: to cold air, to the ground they are lying on, to wind, and through wet clothing.”
Carbon monoxide is the winter hazard that is not about cold at all. It is a colourless, odourless gas from anything that burns fuel: a furnace, a generator, a car. In winter, people run engines in closed garages, sit in idling vehicles with a snow-blocked tailpipe, and bring heaters indoors. The early symptoms, headache, nausea and tiredness, are easy to mistake for the flu.
Cold also makes other injuries worse. A person with a broken leg or a bleeding wound who is lying on frozen ground is losing heat the whole time, and cold interferes with the body's ability to clot and to cope with blood loss. how cold turns an ordinary injury into a serious one.
What this week covers
Wednesday is frostbite in detail: what is happening to the tissue, how to tell mild from serious, and the common first aid mistakes, starting with rubbing it.
Thursday's clinical post is hypothermia, and the single most useful sign for judging how serious it is: shivering, and what it means when it stops.
Saturday is the winter car kit. Not a shopping list for its own sake, but what each item is for if you spend a night on the shoulder of Highway 2.
If you work outside, supervise people who do, or head out of the city in winter, this is the week to make sure someone in the group knows what to do before help arrives. a remote first aid course for when help is hours out.
Quick answers
- Can you get hypothermia above freezing?
- Yes. Wet clothing, wind and cold water can drop body temperature well above 0 °C. Being wet is one of the biggest risk factors, which is why getting out of wet clothes is one of the first steps in treating it.
- Who is most at risk of cold injury?
- Older adults, people who have been drinking, outdoor workers on long shifts, stranded drivers, people without stable housing, and children. Cold slows thinking, so people who are getting dangerously cold often do not notice it themselves.
- What are the signs of carbon monoxide poisoning?
- Headache, dizziness, nausea, tiredness and confusion, often in several people in the same space at once. It is easy to mistake for the flu. Get everyone into fresh air and call 911. Carbon monoxide has no colour or smell, which is why working CO alarms matter.
Sources
- Alberta Health Services (MyHealth.Alberta.ca): Early hypothermia symptoms include shivering, pale skin, apathy, poor judgment, unsteadiness, slurred speech and numb hands; late symptoms include confusion and loss of consciousness. (checked 2026-09-23)