Feb 12 2008
Record Cold Hits International Falls
Well, they won the fight for the title of Icebox of the Nation and then they won the record. It hit -40° F in International Falls, Minnesota yesterday. But no worries, it warmed all the way up to 18 later in the day. That would be a minus 18 , by the way.
MINNEAPOLIS - It lived up to its name: The temperature in International Falls fell to 40 below zero Monday, just a few days after the northern Minnesota town won a federal trademark making it officially the "Icebox of the Nation."
It was so cold that resident Nick McDougall couldn't get his car trunk to close after he got out his charger to kick-start his dead battery. By late morning, the temperature had risen all the way to 18 — below zero.
"This is about as cold as it gets, this is bad. There's no wind — it's just cold," said McDougall, 48, a worker at The Fisherman, a convenience store and gas station in the town on the Canadian border. "People just don't go out, unless you have to go to work."
Residents of the area use electric engine block heaters to keep their cars from freezing.
"You plug in your car, for sure, and you put the car in the garage if you can," McDougall said. His garage is full of other things, so he had to park outside — a "big mistake."
The previous record low for Feb. 11 in International Falls was 37 below, set in 1967, said meteorologist Mike Stewart at the weather service in Duluth.
The temperature also fell to 40 below in Embarrass, 80 miles southeast of International Falls. That's just one degree above the all-time record in Minneapolis, 250 miles to the south, that was set in January 1888, the weather service said.
The cold also caused many schools in Upstate New York to close or delay opening, so this arctic blast is spread out all along the norther tier of the country. There is another three feet of snow on the ground in my old stomping grounds in Oswego County, New York. (Dunno if they are experiencing any salt shortages there or not.) More brutal weather is hitting in Michigan (cold) and Missouri (ice storm). Accuweather is predicting ice and sleet reaching Virgini, Maryland and Washington, DC. Gee, that'll make today's primaries a lot of fun. Worst of all, another winter storm front is about to sweep down all the way to Texas, then march eastwards.
4 Responses to “Record Cold Hits International Falls”
Mostly sunny and 46 here today, but snow and rain in the forecast for tomorrow.
Is Al Gore making another of those lame speeches again ?
The report of record cold cannot possibly be right. I notice today on the Drudge report that Mayor Bloomberg “compares climate change to terrorism: Warming ‘has the potential to kill everybody’” and also that “Climate change may kill thousands in UK by 2017…” as a result of heat. The world is burning up, I tell you.
[…] We'd only point out that it is slightly more than a bad day when you hurtle 150 feet or so and leave a crater with antlers. We're just saying. While normally we would have thought this might be Bullwinkle trying to upstage his lighter and more airworthy partner, Rocky, in this case, we're pretty sure Bullwinkle is holed up in Frostbite Falls. […]