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It's even a big difference from -10C /14f to -20C /-4F . I have once or twice experienced -20C here, and it feels a lot more brutal than -10C.
Bare skin kan handle up to a max of three minuttes in -40C/-40F. Longer than that, and the cells start to die. In -60C, the skin cells dies almost instantly if exposed to the cold. And you too, if you were naked in that cold.
Inuits living in places with extreme cold often (usually) have damaged their lungs due to breathing very cold air.
Your teeth get bristle and might break in -40C and colder if you chew on something when out in the cold.
Metal get bristle too. In extreme cold periods, trains can not run as the railway track get bristle and can break if a train pushes down on them.
0C / 32F has nothing of this.
Neither does -10C, but still you can easily freeze do death in -10C if you are outside for some time (falling asleep etc) with insufficient clothing. But the risk of freezing to death is much larger in -20C.
0 C / 32 F is not all that cold. It can range from fairly mild to properly cold, depending on wind, daylight, and cloud cover, but it's never a particularly "sharp" cold.
I've never experienced -40 C / -40 F, the coldest I've ever experienced was -20 C / -4 F. It's quite a big difference. The cold feels almost electric at those temperatures, like the air is charged with a deep, intense, vibrant cold. And that's only halfway from 0 to -40.
-40 C is a temperature that only happens with any regularity in the coldest populated areas of the world (as well as vast expanses of uninhabited ice caps).
Really depends on what you're used to. 0 C feels pretty cold to me. Many people die of cold when temperatures get that low in parts of the world that are not usually that cold, e.g. India. And even temperatures as high as the high teens C are regarded as cold and can cause high levels of excess mortality in equatorial lowland regions.
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