Gov. Dayton cancels school statewide in Minnesota on Monday due to extreme cold

[uppityperson]

Source: Star-Trib

With temperatures across Minnesota expected to be in the double digits below zero on Monday, Gov. Mark Dayton took the unusual step of canceling schools statewide.

“The safety of Minnesota’s schoolchildren must be our first priority,” Dayton said in a release Friday. “I have made this decision to protect all our children from the dangerously cold temperatures now forecasted for next Monday. I encourage Minnesotans of all ages to exercise caution in these extreme weather conditions.”

Although the state is used to frigid winters, the expected deep freeze surpasses even what hardy Minnesotans can handle.

According to the governor’s office, state law allows him to “authorize the commissioner of education to alter school schedules, curtail school activities, or order schools closed.”...

Read more: http://www.startribune.com/local/238603781.html

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http://www.startribune.com/blogs/238455761.html

An Even Colder Front (next Monday - coldest in 10 years)

You know it's bad when they cancel school at International Falls, America's admittedly proud Capital of Cold.

"So why has it been so persistently cold?" the Star Tribune's Vineeta Sawkar asked me yesterday. Well, we may as well live in Canada. And prevailing winds aloft, the jet stream winds we love to babble about, have been unrelenting, howling from the Yukon for the last month. Most winters we see more variability - puffs of Pacific air interspersed with the nasty stuff. Not this winter.

Living in Minnesota we're all accustomed to cold fronts. But early next week we should experience a cold-front-on-steroids - a brittle bubble of pain - a black hole of molecular activity still reeking of Siberian madness. Cars will complain, schools will close; travel agents may see an uptick in new business. By my calculations this may be the coldest slap in a decade. In late January 2004 we saw metro lows as cold as -24F, one day with a high of -8F. This outbreak will be comparable, maybe a little worse.

Expect sub-zero temperatures Saturday evening into Wednesday morning, as cold as -20s in the 'burbs, -30s for St. Cloud and Brainerd.

[lunasun]

1. -50 -60 wind chill does it matter he asks?

http://minnesota.cbslocal.com/video/9694137-noon-weather-report/

[SomeGuyInEagan]

2. "Better keep the brass monkeys in tonight"

- Henry Blake, 4077th M*A*S*H

But we'll hit the 20s by Thursday!

[AtheistCrusader]

3. So THAT's where our damn snow is.

-Signed
The entire PacNW

[geardaddy]

10. It doesn't like to snow when it's that cold.

We haven't had tons of snow this winter.

[AtheistCrusader]

15. Yeah, our sweet spot is 32-38 degrees.

Need the ground frozen the night before, and just above actual freezing to get the clouds to dump around here.

[oberliner]

4. Minnsetoa?

Does the Star Trib not have editors?

[KansDem]

6. You'd think they've have spell check, at least...

[uppityperson]

7. They changed it.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

8. Marketing tactic.

Come to Minnesota, it's not so cold ... that's that other place, Minnsetoa.

[dragonlady]

5. I recall -60F in Minnesota in the early 1980s

That was the overnight low and the wind chill was -100F. At least the children were out of school on winter break.

[geardaddy]

9. 1982

I was a junior in high school. That was brutal.

[murielm99]

12. We had that here in Illinois in the early 1980's, too.

I was in the hospital, having a baby. She was born on December 21. They did not let people go home until Christmas day, unless they lived in town. I was forty minutes from the hospital, and I live in the country. It was scary, getting home with a newborn, when the wind chills alone were -100. It was before cell phones, too.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

18. Things tended not to close down for the cold in those days, but I think the difference

was that we were used to it then. It was not uncommon to have temperatures below zero for weeks at a time.

During my senior year in college, we had one of those cold spells (I played in a broomball tournament on a day when the high was -8°). One day I woke up to hear the radio announcer saying that the high would be -27°. I was taking a class at the U of M while enrolled at Augsburg College, just a few blocks away, and I looked out the window of my high-rise dorm, hoping that the lights wouldn't go on at the West Bank campus of the U. Unfortunately, they did. So I put on layers, wore mittens over gloves, took off my glasses (so they wouldn't freeze to my face), and wrapped myself in scarves so that only my eyes showed.

The West Bank buildings are all connected by tunnels, so I ducked into the first one and walked through the tunnels to where I could catch the shuttle bus to the East Bank campus.

Things closed for snow in those days, but not for extreme cold. If the buses could run, life went on.

But a sudden and brief drop into Arctic temperatures could be deadly, especially since we have large numbers of people who have moved here since the days of normally Arctic winters and don't know how to dress for them. They may not know that they have to run their cars every day or use a plug-in block heater to keep the battery from dying. They may not even own the kinds of padded snowsuits and snow pants that were part of every child's winter uniform in the old days. (When I was a kid, girls couldn't wear pants to school, but they could wear dresses tucked into snow pants. Go figure.)

Back in the old days, I used to consider a walk for exercise feasible if the temperature was -10° or warmer. Below -10°, breathing was painful.

So yeah, considering all the people who have moved in here since the Arctic days and the fact that these temperatures haven't been seen since 1996, I'd say that Dayton made the right call.

In 1982, people just would have grumbled at a high of -15° and gone about their daily routines.

But even I, a native Minnesotan, have become a chicken in 19 years of living in Oregon (1984-2003) and ten years of relatively mild winters.

[riversedge]

11. walker--the repug gov of WI is considering it also.

[MuseRider]

13. Yikes! We are forecast to be -30 wc those days, nothing quite as bad as Minnesota!

Wow. Real winter again. It seems so brutal when it actually is like it used to be here not too many years ago. Now if we could just get some big wet snows to help with the drought!

Be careful up there! It is going to be tough here but nothing at all like what you are facing. Bundle up or better yet, stay home.

[geardaddy]

14. This winter has been brutal.

[lunasun]

16. I have already had enuf! Then my brother in law calls on NYE to talk about how he was golfing

in AZ
Wonder what the ground hog will say in a month?

[Thor_MN]

17. The groundhog is going to say "Where are my frickin' nuts?"