Example: Your crossing a lake in Skyrim... and since its cold out... when you try crossing it I believe your stamina should go down intill you leave the water..... When your stamina is drained you'll slowly die...

I would rather it not. I don't like it when too many elements affect you. It makes the gaming rather annoying in my opinion.

Totally.

Make you think twice and stick your hand in to gauge temperature before jumping in your Skyrim shower!

If it affected every lake, yes this could get quite annoying, but I think it should only affect the lakes more towards the frozen areas, where some would be frozen over (there you need to worry about the Volkihar)

Too much environmental impact is irritating, especially if you can't quite figure out what's going on.

Yes, but it should be obvious where the effect is in place. If you wade into a river or lake with ice floating in it, for example. That should solve the problem of mysteriously dying without knowing the cause.

I do like environmental hazards, but they should make sense - especially since you can't actually feel anything like temperature.

I think it should but only in certain areas and not straight away, only if you spend too Long in cold water should it give you something like hypathermia which you would then need to cure some how.

No, sounds like another thing that would just get tedious and boring pretty quickly. However if there is a hardcoe mode or something like that of Fallout: NV then perhaps hypothermia could be something the player could be deeply frightened off, second to frostbite of course.

If nothing else, at least give us a line or two of dialog acknowledging the water is cold, and maybe a shaking of the screen for a few moments after we get out.

You may also want to check out this thread: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1163773-water-hazard/

To an extent. I don't really want to start worrying about hypothermia and doing Bear Grylls style naked push-ups and urine potting...

Yes something useful for water walking.

In the cold places of the world, getting your clothes wet can mean death within minutes.

I like survival gameplay, especially in a huge and hostile world like that of ES games. However, many players would rather ignore the anything that gets in the way of whatever else it is they want to do. I'd love this kind of feature, but it probably belongs more in a hardcoe more than a standard game.

Well, when it's really cold, I think the player's character should make a few shivering sounds and then rub his or her hands together, maybe see a cloud of hot steam when breathing, etc... at the very LEAST. But it would be cool if there were options under a hardcoe mode for such things as temperature affecting your character's health, stamina, reducing your ability to fight off disease, etc ...

I think if you fall in an ice-covered lake or otherwise take a swim, you'd better be somehow magically protected. Why couldn't a simple "Protection from ice" spell also double as a shield against temperature loss? Then it's doubly useful, not just from cold-based attacks, but from all cold-based experiences, such as swimming in ice water. If you swim in ice water, you should see a reduction in speed (you shouldn't sustain injury directly) but you might catch a cold and see a reduction in your Constitution as a result of that cold. Otherwise, you resist the affects and are basically just a little slower untill your muscles warm back up near a fire in a tavern somewhere.

Shrinkage aside, I suppose cold water may drain your speed, and then wears off shortly after leaving the river.

I think it would make more sense to slow the onset of hypothermia rather than be able to resist stages of it. If there is such an easy work around, then it really does become more of a hassle than survival feature, as there is no real reason why the player would succumb to conditions, especially if they disappear quickly after exiting the water (clothes don't just become dry when you get out, they would freeze).

No thanks here. That seems like it'd be pretty annoying.
And, although it may not snow everywhere, it's cold everywhere in Skyrim. A shining sun and valley full of green grass doesn't mean it's warm. It's cold, trust me. Just not snowing. So essentially, every lake would be like this.
A little too real for me, thanks.

Well thats strange thats swimming in molten lava can damage player health but ice-cold water is OK
Does everyone in TES (expect of Nord they really do it from childhood)http://pics.livejournal.com/nevandal/pic/0000chg1/s320x240 ?
I use Duke Patricks Basic Hypothermia II Rev 3.1
http://tesalliance.org/forums/index.php?/files/file/534-duke-patricks-basic-hypothermia-ii-rev-31/
For change this

I don't want to die in about 13 minutes and have to change clothings to dry nordic armor or other dry hot clothing, after I get out of the water to not die from hypothermia!

It should affect everyone, except the nords (cold bath traditions) and argonians (cool blood).

Cold blood doesn't means they are immune to cold... It means theire body cannot regulate theire body temperature.

QFT. I mean, there isn't really any difference between them, albeit that lava usually kills instantly, whereas ice-cold water need a minute or two. It wouldn't bother me much if the water wasn't fatal, but I'd at least want some kind of negative effect imparted on me for jumping into the water, say reduced movement speed, attack speed, etc until you get to a warm fire, a tavern, use a fire spell to warm yourself or similar.

(Also really wish the Volkihar are in-game, those vamps sound awesomely terrifying ^^)

Eh, we already have to think about how much breath we have left.

Nah, I'm not convinced this would make the game more fun. You might as well have cold weather hurt you when you step outside without proper attire. It's realistic, sure, but also just another annoyance to solve with [insert magic buff here].