Updraft: January 18, 2008 Archive

Long awaited, much heralded

Posted at 9:21 AM on January 18, 2008 by Craig Edwards

I’m not talking about the match up between the Gophers and the Hoosiers. Breaking news more than a week ago allowed us to prepare for this smack of arctic air. You can talk about it for days, but experiencing it is a whole different story.

International Falls, where the sign coming into town welcomes you to the Ice Box of the Nation, recorded a minimum of minus 29 on Thursday. But if you work the numbers for the first 17 days of the month, you’ll find that the average temperature shakes out to more than 10 degrees above normal. The record high of 41 on the 6th was a big win in the plus column.
International Falls forecast

Well folks, settle in for character building, but not record cold. There will be no problem with melting skating rinks for a while. Take this frigid invasion seriously. Cover your head, or at least your ears. Frostbite is painful and long lasting.
CE

Watch for lake effect snowfalls the rest of this month

Posted at 11:23 AM on January 18, 2008 by Mark Seeley (1 Comments)

As the cold artic air takes a grip on the region its interaction with Lake Superior will be interesting to watch. Lake surface waters range from 33 to 36 degrees F, so they will give up plenty of water vapor to the dry, overlying polar air. This will lead to some lake effect snows on the surrounding landscape, including some of the Minnesota north shore locations. Historically some of these snowfalls have been enormous. The historic cold of February 1936 brought a 22 inch lake effect snowfall to Grand Marais. Likewise the historic cold of January 1967 brought lake effect snowfall ranging from 11 to 20 inches along the north shore over January 5th and 7th. More recently bitter cold during January of 1996 brought 15 to 21 inch lake effect snowfalls to north shore areas over the 16th to the 20th, and in 2005 anywhere from 13 to 30 inches of lake effect snowfall occurred over the 4th week of January. The all-time lake enhanced snowfall was recorded at Wolf Ridge Environmental Learning center near Finland in Lake County when they measured 45 inches over January 6th and 7th 1994.

We'll see if such amounts are in store for northeastern Minnesota over the next week or so.

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Wind chill chatter

Posted at 3:26 PM on January 18, 2008 by Paul Huttner (1 Comments)

Yes, it's Minnesota. Yeah, it gets this cold here. And, yeah we're tough.

But your skin doesn't care what you attitude is when it comes to freezing in -40 wind chill.

Here are some reminders about wind chill and how quickly your skin can freeze this weekend.

Wind chill chart, calculator and explanation

Wind chill FAQ's

Current and forecast conditions for Minnesota and Wisconsin

Put another log on the fire, cocoon, and stay warm!

PH

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