On Dec. 4, I wrote about the above scene outside my office at Hibbing Community College in my post “Insider Tips on How to Dress for Cold.”
At the time I thought I was merely waxing poetic about the first of the “really cold” weather we experience every year in northern Minnesota. What I didn’t know then is that the sunrise temperature would only be above zero a handful of times for the next two months.
It’s not that we’ve broken a lot of records this winter. Snowfall, fairly normal. The 1996 coldest temperature record still stands. What is unusual is how much total time we’ve spent below zero this winter.
As Bob Collins points out at MPR’s NewsCut blog, the state has logged a staggering amount of weeks below zero. Here on the Range: More than seven weeks of combined time below zero. That’s more than half of all hours since winter began. Meantime, while snowfall has been on the high side, seemingly none of it has melted or packed down.
Below, see the same scene outside my office last week on Feb. 28. The “Lifetime Learners” in the statue are nothing more than foreheads in the snow.
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