How do you describe cold?

How do you describe the cold?

It's dropped to between 0-3 degrees in Cambridge, which means that when I go running the pavement is edged with frost and my breath comes up in great clouds. I stopped and picked up a leaf encased in frost and it was thick and velvety and it folded without breaking.

But I cant figure out how to describe cold - it's blue, it's gut-clenching, it's also hot in some strange way.

I thought of how in The Giver, Jonas receives the knowledge of what hot and cold and starving and pain through memory, because words (as much as I adore them) don't really properly replicate those feelings. (Which also makes for an interesting pondering over what the function of words is - if it is the replication of reality then failure is inevitable, if it is to serve an aesthetic purpose in its own right I don't see how it can fail, but still, there is something more, beyond communication, beyond sound -)

I'm meaning to write out what this term was like, the days have slipped by and I realised that apart from memory I have little other record of my time. But this term was like cold, and I'm struggling to find the words.

Patience

Patience and thought.