From NWS Duluth, MN, an old record beaten by five degrees:
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE DULUTH MN
518 PM CST FRI JAN 21 2011
...RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE SET AT INTERNATIONAL FALLS MN...
A RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE OF -46 DEGREES WAS SET AT INTERNATIONAL
FALLS MN TODAY. THIS BREAKS THE OLD RECORD OF -41 SET IN 1954.
Here is a map (above) of a few notable low temperatures across the area. The contoured shading in the background was created by interpolating the observations using GIS software. Therefore, the contours may not necessarily match individual observations, but the overall trend in temperatures is pretty close. Areas near Lake Superior managed to stay much warmer than outlying areas, and you can even detect a hint of urban heat influences around the Twin Cities.
The above pictures are from Babbitt, Minnesota where a frigid morning low temperature of -46 degrees was recorded on January 21, 2011. The pictures were taken by observer Ryan Scharber. The pictures show ice fog, which is usually a shallow fog consisting of suspended ice crystals. Ice fog usually only occurs when temperatures fall below -22 degrees Fahrenheit (-30 Celsius) according to the AMS Glossary. Normally, fog consists of tiny water droplets, or supercooled water droplets. However, when temperatures are as cold as they were this morning in parts of northern Minnesota, it becomes too cold for liquid water to exist, and small ice crystals can develop if the amount of water vapor in the air is sufficient.
Some notes of interest:
- The lowest temperatures recorded in the NWS Duluth county warning area were -46 degrees at both International Falls, MN (ASOS) and Babbitt, MN (CO-OP).
- The -46 degree low was tied for the 5th lowest on record at International Falls. Temperature records date back to 1897. The record is -55 degrees which was recorded on January 6, 1909.
- The -46 degree low was tied for the lowest on record at the International Falls Airport. The official observing station was moved to the airport in 1939. This is tied with the -46 degree reading from January 6, 1968.
- The -25 degree low at Duluth is tied for the 5th lowest minimum temperature in the last decade (since 2000). The lowest minimum temperature of the 2000s thus far has been -30 on January 29, 2004.
- The state record low temperature in Minnesota was recorded at Tower, Minnesota on February 2, 1996. The low was -60 degrees. That was also the coldest temperature ever recorded east of the Mississippi River.
- The state record low temperature in Wisconsin was recorded at Couderay on February 2nd and February 4th of 1996. The temperatures dipped down to -55 degrees both nights.
List Of Coldest Morning Lows
THE FOLLOWING ARE OBSERVED LOW TEMPERATURES THROUGH 900 AM FRIDAY JANUARY 21 2011. TEMPERATURES ARE IN DEGREES FAHRENHEIT. TEMP LOCATION ST COUNTY SOURCE ---- ----------------------- -- -------------- ------- -46 INTERNATIONAL FALLS MN KOOCHICHING ASOS -46 BABBITT MN ST LOUIS COOP -43 EMBARRASS MN ST LOUIS COOP -43 BIGFORK MN ITASCA RAWS -43 ASH LAKE MN ST LOUIS MNDOT -43 EFFIE MN ITASCA RAWS -40 LITTLEFORK MN KOOCHICHING COOP -40 BIRCHDALE MN KOOCHICHING MNDOT TEMP LOCATION ST COUNTY SOURCE ---- ----------------------- -- -------------- ------- -39 ORR MN ST LOUIS RAWS -38 MINONG WI WASHBURN RAWS -38 CASS LAKE MN CASS RAWS -38 SQUAW LAKE MN ITASCA MNDOT -38 CUTFOOT MN ITASCA RAWS -38 BOVEY MN ITASCA PRIVATE -38 KABETOGAMA MN ST LOUIS COOP -38 CRANE LAKE MN ST LOUIS AWOS -37 MARGIE MN KOOCHICHING MNDOT -37 HILL CITY MN ITASCA RAWS -37 ELY MN ST LOUIS RAWS -37 RICE LAKE MN AITKIN RAWS -36 LONG LAKE MN ITASCA PRIVATE -36 JACOBSON MN AITKIN MNDOT -36 BARNES WI BAYFIELD RAWS -36 COTTON MN ST LOUIS MNDOT -36 MAKINEN MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE -36 LONGVILLE MN CASS AWOS -36 PINE RIVER MN CASS AWOS -36 SEAGULL LAKE MN COOK RAWS -36 WRIGHT MN ST LOUIS COOP -35 LAKE VERMILION MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE -35 KABETOGAMA MN ST LOUIS RAWS TEMP LOCATION ST COUNTY SOURCE ---- ----------------------- -- -------------- ------- -34 MCGRATH MN AITKIN MNDOT -34 ASH RIVER MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE -34 GUNFLINT LAKE MN COOK COOP -34 HAYWARD WI SAWYER RAWS -34 LIND WI BURNETT RAWS -34 MOOSE LAKE MN CARLTON RAWS -33 GRAND RAPIDS MN ITASCA AWOS -33 SAGINAW MN ST LOUIS MNDOT -33 COHASSET MN ITASCA PRIVATE -33 MCGREGOR MN AITKIN AWOS -33 AITKIN MN AITKIN AWOS -33 HIBBING MN ST LOUIS RAWS -33 JENKINS MN CROW WING PRIVATE -33 EMILY MN CROW WING MNDOT -33 BRAINERD MN CROW WING ASOS -33 MOOSE LAKE MN CARLTON AWOS -33 SOUTH RANGE WI DOUGLAS PRIVATE -32 GRANTSBURG WI BURNETT PRIVATE -31 SILVER BAY MN LAKE AWOS -31 TWO HARBORS MN LAKE AWOS -31 LEADER MN CASS PRIVATE -31 DEER RIVER MN ITASCA PRIVATE -31 SIREN WI BURNETT AWOS -31 GRANTSBURG WI BURNETT WIDOT -31 HINCKLEY MN PINE PRIVATE -30 BREEZY POINT MN CROW WING PRIVATE -30 TUCKER LAKE MN COOK PRIVATE -30 GLIDDEN WI ASHLAND RAWS -30 GORDON WI DOUGLAS RAWS TEMP LOCATION ST COUNTY SOURCE ---- ----------------------- -- -------------- ------- -29 I-35 MILE 198 MN PINE MNDOT -29 SEELEY WI SAWYER PRIVATE -29 4W CLAM LAKE WI BAYFIELD PRIVATE -29 CANOSIA TOWNSHIP MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE -29 GILBERT MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE -29 ISABELLA MN LAKE RAWS -28 10 NE DULUTH MN ST LOUIS SCHOOL -28 AURORA MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE -28 NISSWA MN CROW WING PRIVATE -28 MERRIFIELD MN CROW WING PRIVATE -27 SPOONER WI WASHBURN SCHOOL -27 HERMANTOWN MIDDLE SCHOOL MN ST LOUIS SCHOOL -27 HAUGEN WI WASHBURN WIDOT -26 DRUMMOND WI BAYFIELD SCHOOL -26 SUPERIOR WI DOUGLAS AWOS -26 PHILLIPS WI PRICE AWOS -25 FERNBERG MN LAKE RAWS -25 WASHBURN WI BAYFIELD RAWS -25 PINE CITY MN PINE SCHOOL -25 DULUTH MN ST LOUIS ASOS -24 DULUTH THOMPSON HILL MN ST LOUIS MNDOT -24 I-35 MILE 181 MN PINE MNDOT -22 HIGH BRIDGE WI ASHLAND PRIVATE -22 MAPLE WI DOUGLAS PRIVATE -22 BLATNIK BRIDGE MN ST LOUIS MNDOT -21 LESTER PARK / DULUTH MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE -21 SILVER CREEK MN LAKE PRIVATE -20 CHESTER PARK / DULUTH MN ST LOUIS PRIVATE
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BTW, International Falls holds the registered trademark of Icebox of the Nation
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kcom at 5:44 asks:
“. . . what do animals do for water when things never melt? Eat snow?
There are heated stock tanks for domestic animals as eating, melting, and warming snow takes a toll. Wild animals and horses or cattle left out do eat snow but that usually isn’t as much as they really need. More:
http://www.equisearch.com/horses_care/health/illnesses_injuries/eqcolic3473/
Once temperatures get below about -30˚F, you can never really get used to it. Even communities like Fairbanks, AK has perennial problems when temperatures will hover in the -40s and -30s for a week. Tires go flat, engines freeze up, diesel gels… things break much more easily.
I liked the comment on Arctic jackets having a strip to cover the zipper… I never thought anything about it. I just always assumed it was there to keep the zipper warmer and stop air from getting in. I guess that shows how people here do just deal with it. Then that first 80˚F day in May when the sun is shining and there’s a light breeze and the birds are chirping and everything is turning greener by the minute… you realize why it’s all so worth it.
David70 says:
January 21, 2011 at 5:35 pm
Coldest I’ve ever experienced is 15 below give or take. I couldn’t imagine it being any colder. Can your body tell the difference between 30 below and 40 below?
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hotrod (Larry L) says:
January 21, 2011 at 7:01 pm
I had spit freezing as it hit my ski pants at top of Vail skifield Colorado. I was young (student) and found it amazing that this happened. I think the air temp in village that day was about -20 F something. Maybe a strong wind chill helped cool the spit.
What a bunch of wusses, can’t take a little cold weather.
Mike in Houston
I actually don’t know if I could survive in my home at -40 degrees here in SC. My house was built in 1896, has those high ceilings and was made to stay cool in the summer and not warm in the winter.
While I do empathise with our Minnesota family and friends, I know they are used to these extreme winter conditions and will cope and be well.
Also, they still haven’t come close to beating our record of -52.2, established January 2, 1950. (That would be about -62 deg F.) We have come awfully close a few times in my lifetime. Surprisingly this year, we have not yet hit -40C, except with a factoring of wind chill. However, we have consistently had -25C to -30C temperatures for the past 3 months, below average for November/December.
Could be we have set new snowfall precipitation records this month, at least for snow on the ground for the month. The major snowfall stopped Monday morning and crews are still struggling to clean up the mess. I am anxiously awaiting the month-end results on environment Canada to see if we have finally broken some of our old-standing records.
Tips and Notes seems to be closed right now
Joe Bastardi tweet (BigJoeBastardi)
“Global temp anomaly at 1 pm Eastern time today (1/21/11) : -.288C!”
http://twitter.com/BigJoeBastardi
……………………………………………………………………………………………………………..
Joe Bastardi, 8:42 video from 1/20/11, unusual cold where should be warm, low solar cycle
When it is cold enough you can hear the stars:
http://www.siberiapictures.com/stories/horses/horses.htm
This is my neck of the woods. Brutally cold! In early Feb of 1996, we experienced a week of this stuff, and it was even a little colder. -60 for the state record was set then. Forecast is for highs in the 20’s next week. HEAT WAVE! That’ll feel real nice. Just walking out in this stuff creates a wind chill. And a little breeze hurts.
While the -46 F set a new daily record at I-Falls, and the lowest temp there since 1968, many communities in NE Minnesota (where I live) have been considerably colder. The -60F set near Tower in 1996 was the coldest reading ever recorded in the US , east of the Great Plains. Many communities have seen -50 F or lower in this area, and even the daytime highs can stay below zero for many days on end. Statistically, the coldest American winters outside of Alaska are in northern Minnesota.
What’s really cool is that after a long spell of cold weather, a temperature of zero can feel quite mild!
I remember back in the mid 80’s when we would see wind chills under the old system hitting -60 to -80. One day they were running -80 to -100. That was the windiest day with sub-zero temps i’ve ever experienced. Minnesota winters can get very brutal, and dangerous. You respect it, you don’t thumb your nose at it. That’s why we can deal with it easy enough.
Mercury freezes at -37.9 F. So, how do they measure temperatures less than that?
Don’t you just hate it when the dashboard on your car splits up the middle when it gets too cold? Or there’s frost on the screws of the INSIDE light switch at the front door?
Charles Higley says:
January 21, 2011 at 10:06 pm
Mercury freezes at -37.9 F. So, how do they measure temperatures less than that?
Don’t you just hate it when the dashboard on your car splits up the middle when it gets too cold? Or there’s frost on the screws of the INSIDE light switch at the front door?
—–
REPLY: Heh! You’ve been there! I always enjoyed how car tires would go “thunk-thunk-thunk” because they would freeze flat at the bottom, requiring a few minutes of driving until they thawed.
Well, it is apparently the consensus among climatologists and fortunetellers that AGW causes cold weather.
Bedtime for me. Would someone read me that story about how CO2 retards heat loss on clear nights again?
One nice thing about last year was that the negative Arctic Oscillation helped bring in warmish maritime air to the northeast. It’s negative this year too, but the warm stream is further east.
One nice thing about this year is we’re getting snow storms. 4.3″ today, 31.7″ for the month, and 19″ on the ground. The last is about 50 cm for you folk with sensible scales.
Charles Higley says:
January 21, 2011 at 10:06 pm
> Mercury freezes at -37.9 F. So, how do they measure temperatures less than that?
Alcohol (the thermometers with red fluid), electronic (direct and radiative), bimetalic (dial with needle), tongue on lampost, etc.
Having divided my life between MN and WI, I’ve been colder, -35F a couple of times, but not often.
One of those times, after Pinatubo, had to warm the air in the car with a blowtorch so the fan would spin.
Gordon Hommes says:
January 21, 2011 at 9:53 pm
What’s really cool is that after a long spell of cold weather, a temperature of zero can feel quite mild!
____________________________________________
In Minnesooooota, a 32 degree day with sunshine and no wind is t-shirt weather, I mean climate, I mean weather……..whatever!
Larry gave a very interesting description of the different kinds of things you’ll notice when the temperature gets really cold. As an aside, I’d just like to add that fasting can produce a similar intensification of one’s perception of heat loss.
If you’ve ever fasted for several days and then taken a walk around the neighborhood, you’ll notice that you can practically count the calories of heat leaving the surface of your skin. Their loss is keenly felt: not only do you notice them going, but you actually mourn their departure. When a breeze blows across your exposed skin surfaces, you get a very vivid experience of just what the “wind chill effect” is all about. Additionally, you can clearly sense the differing levels of insulation provided (or not provided) by various layers of clothing as they play across your moving frame.
Extreme conditions like these, whether brought about by frigid external temperatures or intentional food deprivation, allow us to experience ordinary things, including our very selves, in a new way. They acquaint us more intimately with the structures of being, allowing the philosopher and the scientist in us to plumb the precarious nature of the cords that knit body and soul together. They deepen our wisdom in ways that mere theoretical knowledge cannot. To “cloth the naked” is a corporal work of mercy that all Christians will have heard of and most will try to practise. But it is one thing to donate an old coat to the church clothing bank and forget about it, quite another thing to perceive a fellow human being dangerously bleeding heat away to his surroundings and losing his life thereby. The fact that we can nurture his soul by clothing his body is what makes it a corporal work of mercy and not simply a generic good deed. If we do not perceive the latter, we are that much more unlikely to do the former. I am, I confess, continuously amazed by the role that even brute physical necessities play in our edification.
I lived in Montana for a good many years. Lowest temperature (not wind chill) in the state was -70 F on January 20, 1954 at Rogers Pass, about 30 miles from Helena, the state capitol. That’s the lowest temperature recorded in the lower 48 United States, according to the National Weather Service:
http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/tfx/tx.php?wfo=tfx&type=html&loc=text&fx=topweather
While living in Butte (1954-57), we went to school (and ice skating) when it was -45 F. Dress in layers, and if your feet start to get cold, get inside right away!
Minnesota can be cold, I when I was a child I have walk to school in minus temperatures many a time it is not unusual to have day time highs in the – 20 with morning in the -30s. , I have unzipped my coat in -19 since that was the warmest weather temperature we had in the last seventy two hours. Try to explain to some one in Arizona that the high temperature for the day is going to be -22.
The joke in my household is that my wife though she knew what winter was until she married me and she moved to Fargo. She grew up and had lived in central South Dakota her first forty years and was totally unprepared for the winters in Fargo. She did learn that my home town of Mahnomen MN the temperature were on average colder, the Autumn comes about two weeks earlier and Spring about two weeks later than Fargo. I know a lot of -30 a few – 40s and a -50, The -50 was Christmas Eve in the eights in wester North Dakota, as I found out on that morning, even radial tire develop flat spots at those temperatures, it had been several year since I had driven on tires with flat spots. I had switched to radial tires years earlier and they generally do not do that, bias ply tire would do that in the minus teens.
I also remember a few years ago open day of deer season in Minnesota the temperature was -13, that was in the first week of November., in the seventies I frost bit my ear deer hunting at -20 all though I think that was mid November. Ice fishing in the daytime temperatures of -20 is not bad if you have a decent fish house. You will need to start the vehicular ever few hour so it will start when you want to go home.
Oh by the way these temperature are the actual temperatures not wind chill temperatures, Wind chill only makes it worst but a -20 wind chill is only experience it you stand in the wind as a child you quickly learn to get out of the wind , if you do being outside on a cold day with below zero temptures it is not to bad, all though after a few hours being out in that weather when you get back inside start to warm up, your toes may smart a bit as they warm up.
As I got older the cold got harder and harder to take, today I check Fargo temperature and it was at -7, fortunately were I live now the temperature here in Mesa Arizona was around 70 I can say I do not miss seeing temperatures with the minus sign in front of the digits and I can say the my sons and siblings do not feel sorry for me when I complain that is cold when the temperature in Mesa get around the freezing.
Northern Minnesota can see those temperature in August. my brother in law lost most of his soy bean crop to frost near Mahnomen a in the early 2000s when frost came in mid August, That was the second time Mahnomen county had an August freeze in the fifty plus years I have been alive, It happen the first time in the sixties in Mahnomen when I was a child. Cold weather is a part of life in the northern states and little has change in my life time some winter are warmer and some are colder and some are down right brutal. The only thing you can say when you live up there is if you don’t like the weather just wait it will change, The only question is what direction. Generally it warmer in the summer and colder in the winter and spring and fall may or may not exist. Sometime it seams that way with summer also. The running joke up there is there are two season Winter and road construction.
Anthony,
Your tips page appears not to be working.
Perhaps soon enough much of the debate will crap out. I know you’re into alt tech, so get a load of this —
http://pesn.com/2011/01/17/9501746_Focardi-Rossi_10_kW_cold_fusion_prepping_for_market/
And just to be topical, in my part of MN it was only -14 or so. Last year we had a few days of -30. Did you know car tires can catastrophically deflate at that temp?
It is mostly just something to talk about. I’m a little east of the outlined area. Temps around here were a mere -16 and -20 at the stations on either side. NBD. It was 80+ in here on oak & hard maple, I didn’t even have to start with the ironwood stash.
I’d bet that the ice on the lakes was really singing last night. It is pretty cool when you catch it doing that.
I used to start cars in weather like this in the college days when I worked at a rental store. We’d load the service truck with moving blankets, a generator, kerosene heaters, and a battery charger. We’d pull up to the dead car, charge the battery, cover the engine/hood with blankets, and point 3 Reddy Heaters under the car. Five minutes and 25 bucks later the car was running with full heat. We made pretty good money. Most days were at least 25-30 below plus wind. I can’t say that I’ve been much under -35 tho.
I experienced -30F in Stowe Vermont in 1996, the year of the big snow, and this was in the town. Up the mountain it was colder and windy, 25-35 Knots. So wind chill put it lower than -30. It seemed too cold to me trying to have a days skiing. The guides thought I was mad. I cannot imagine -46 (C or F)
Record cold also in Korea.
From KBS World 2011-01-18
Record cold wave in Korea