Accurate Cold

It has recently got a little colder in Europe, which has resulted in the usual round of eveyone complaining about how cold it is and how out of character for this time of year etc etc. The fact that it is the middle of Winter and the coldest time of the year and only recently dropped below 3 degrees celcius seems to have escaped them, I mean if its not meant to be cold at this time of the year when is it? Of course the answer is, that most people NEVER want it to be cold, but I'm getting used to that idea now after being subjected to it for 29 years. What I find it really hard to get used to is that the various news agencies around the world are buying into the cold mania and losing all ability to give accurate reports. A good example is the recent Russian "cold snap".
It seems that around a week or so ago Russia, or more accurately, the Moscow region was subjected to unusually cold weather. The weather was so bad that many people died from freezing to death and all kinds of emergency measures were brought into place. I don't for a moment suggest that this was not the case, but what I found interesting was the disparity of reporting on the event. This disparity fell into two main categories. The first, was the difference in recorded temperature. A friend of mine said that he read in the German media that it reached -39 degrees celcius, a quick search on the net found this article which says -24 degrees, this article that says -31 and yet another article that doesn't give a precise temperature at all. I find it absolutely amazing that these articles, most from fairly reputable news sources can have such a discrepancy about the temperature of Moscow, the largest city in Russia, but it doesn't end there.
The second way in which things differ from article to article is of course the records. Society now seems fascinated with records. Every day we have to beat more and more records and something isn't viewed as news worthy unless it does so. I guess with that in mind it should come as no surprise that almost every article about the cold weather seems to feel a need to mention how it breaks some kind of record. What was amusing to me was that once again, despite a large chunk of evidence and recorded fact each report comes up with differing "coldest day in Moscow" and how, depending on the widely varying temperature that it was on those days, how it was broken or almost broken. How can it possibly be that there is such disagreement about an event that happened a few days ago, in a large city? I suspect the answer ties into the fact that almost all europeans seem to be fixated on the weather and the natural human tendancy to exaggerate.
While I'm on the subject of cold weather, perhaps a reader can explain to me why the following (admittedly a somewhat unsavoury topic but nonetheless curious) seems to never occur, visible farts. I've lived in some colder part of the world for a while now, certainly I've been in weather that was cold enough to freeze breath very often and yet i've noticed that you never, ever, see anyones farts. This was highlighted to me recently as I was standing at a bus stop with one other person in front of me with his back to me. I quite audibly heard the guy fart, but despite being a sub zero day, was unable to see a thing. The only explanation I was able to come up with is that breath was visible due to the moisture content and perhaps farts were invisible as they did not have enough moisture. I asked a few canadian friends of mine about the subject and (after the laughing stopped) they too were also unable to remember ever "seeing" a fart, despite the fact that where they grew up it was below freezing for vast amounts of the year. Please leave a comment if you think you know the answer to this conundrum :)