21 ms·
Why does Minnesota sometimes get colder than the North Pole?
- classified 5y agoThere's even a joke about that. Q: When is summer in Minnesota? A: Last year, I think, it was on a Thursday.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- rsync 5y agoI lived in MPLS for five years. A -30 or -40 degree morning was a magical time. Everything worked. Everyone did exactly the thing they had to be doing. Everything was done correctly and diligently and on time. You had your shit together or you stayed home. Or you were dead. I miss it sometimes ...
- fy20 5y agoI'm from the UK originally, and now live in Northern Europe where we regularly have -20C or more during winter. It's crazy to me that if there is even a light dusting of snow, the UK comes to a halt. Where as here, it's just life as usual. You just get on with it and go about your day.
- Accacin 5y agoYou can always guess someone will comment exactly this. Yeah the UK have problems with heavy snow. Yes, many countries do. Yes, Northern Europe are better at dealing with it but still have their own issues. Like hotter countries are better at dealing with the heat.
- colechristensen 5y agoComing from Minnesota and spending a few years in the SF Bay area it was funny to me how weather I didn't really even consider rain (maybe like heavy fog that was precipitating a little) would grind the highways to a stop. Whatever the most extreme weather is in a location it tends to grind everything to a halt and generates a lot of exaggeration about how bad things are. -40 is fun, especially throwing boiling water into the air and how it doesn't hit the ground.
- jrumbut 5y agoI lived in a town in the Vermont mountains where it got to -40 (with very intense wind on top of that) occasionally and it felt qualitatively different than the positive single digit type cold that is more normal in Massachusetts. It was almost easier to deal with because there aren't any options. If you don't have the right jacket, pants, boots, gloves, etc you just can't exist outside even for a few moments to brush off the car. You can't be cold because if you're feeling the cold it's going to do damage.
- Broken_Hippo 5y agoI moved from Indiana (Midwest US) to Norway. I'm near the cost, so it is kind of mild (comparative to inland), but there are vast differences. In places with little to no snowfall, they simply don't have the infrastructure to deal with it, nor does the population have practice in driving and walking in the snow. That's the issue in the Southern US and the UK. Where I lived in the states, it snowed every winter (almost?), but not usually so much at once. We had some infrastructure, but not enough to deal with very much snow at once - pretty much, things shut down if it got above the ankles. This was directly because there wasn't the infrastructure to deal with it. And then, there is Norway, and the main roads are generally good enough. Folks use winter tires (all-season tires are just starting to get popular here: My neighbor doesn't trust them). Side roads generally aren't scraped down to the pavement, but rather get generally cleared and grit laid down for texture. I've seen videos of folks huddled behind a snowplow with Very deep snow: Where I lived in the US simply couldn't have done such a thing. Plus, the population is used to the amounts of snow they get, which means they aren't so concerned. Infrastructure plus comfort levels go far.
- OJFord 5y agoI won't claim to have run the numbers myself, but I assume it's done, and I can estimate that the loss of productivity from the at most few days a year simply doesn't justify the cost of being able to better cope with them. Analogous on an individual level would be air conditioning. Sure, it can be uncomfortably hot for a few days in summer, sometimes, but most people don't think it's enough to justify AC.
- lb1lf 5y ago-Being a Land Rover enthusiast (though for reliability, a Toyota Land Cruiser is the daily driver), I subscribe to a UK Land Rover magazine, being mailed to the rather sparsely populated community I call home on an island off the northwestern coast of Norway. Now, a sure sign that winter is coming is that the editorials in LRM brims with expectation; soon the white mayhem will cause Britain to shut down, and Land Rover owners will again be called upon to brave the elements and go where no ordinary vehicle can go, shopping for the elderly and so on, as they are confined to their homes by a couple of inches of white powder on the ground. (Yes, I exaggerate a little for effect.) I usually read this after having used the tractor to remove the night's 10-12 inches of snowfall from the driveway, so that my kids can ride their bikes to school. A few years ago, I sent LRM a photo of my great aunt, living outside Kirkenes just a tad south of 70 degrees north (and, incidentally, east of Istanbul, but I digress). She - in her early nineties - made short work of the snow and ice in her old Toyota Corolla. It's all about what you are used to; just about any vehicle is quite capable in the wintertime if the driver adjusts properly to the conditions. LRM didn't print my photo, though.
- tjr225 5y agoPeople die during heatwaves literally all the time.
- colechristensen 5y agoThe kind of cold that -40 is is easier to mitigate than heat but considerably more dangerous.
- tjr225 5y agoI’m not sure how that relates to my comment.
- skunkworker 5y agoAs for other cold areas in the contiguous united states. You have Peter Sinks, near Bear Lake, Utah. In which a sinkhole half of a mile in diameter has no outlet valley, is at 8,164 feet and in a dry climate. Which has the second coldest temperature recorded in the lower 48 of -69.3F on Feb 1, 1985. [1] https://climate.usu.edu/PeterSinks/index.php https://climate.usu.edu/PeterSinks/index.php
- CottonMcKnight 5y agoIt is actually fairly rare to see nested rings of contour lines on a map that do NOT increase in elevation, because sinks like this tend to get filled up with water.
- davidw 5y agoInteresting - the Dolomites in Italy have similar sinkholes (doline) that also collect cold air: https://www.arpa.veneto.it/temi-ambientali/climatologia/progetti/depressioni-fredde1 https://www.arpa.veneto.it/temi-ambientali/climatologia/prog...
- mannykannot 5y agoI see that for most of the afternoon of December 9, the wind in the sink was considerably higher than at the rim, which I would not have thought would be likely at all.
- beezle 5y agoAverage temps in the northern half of VT and NH are just as cold as Duluth. Parts of Maine are probably colder.
- maxerickson 5y agoDuluth is on Lake Superior and relatively warm.
- karlshea 5y agoDepends on where in Duluth you mean. It’s significantly colder than Minneapolis, especially if you mean downtown which is at the bottom of a huge hill next to the lake. I was seeing regular temps in the 40s in May when it was upper 70s here in Minneapolis.
- maxerickson 5y agoThe lake has opposite effects in summer and winter.
- karlshea 5y agoYes, I lived in Milwaukee for most of my life and we saw the same things there from Lake Michigan. But you're saying Duluth is "relatively warm" but compared to what? Normal heating degree days: Duluth: 9,444 Twin Cities: 7,581 Portland, ME: 7,106 Duluth isn't particularly warm.
- maxerickson 5y agoRelative to the colder places in Minnesota is what I meant. But I guess there's not a lot of actual towns that are much colder.
- karlshea 5y agoAhh I see. You're right though, there are colder towns, like International Falls.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y agoInteresting. Nevertheless ... think of everywhere in the USA that you think is cold (outside of Alaska) ... almost all of Canada is colder than that (Vancouver and coastal BC being the primary exception).
- sethammons 5y agofun fact for the day: some of california is at a higher latitude than some of canada.
- PaulDavisThe1st 5y ago... but generally has an ocean-influenced climate (at least west of the Sierras) rather than a continental climate as found across Canada.
- dsizzle 5y agoAlso kind of fun: Detroit is due north of Canada
- dredmorbius 5y agoOr as some put it: Canada is a southern suburb of Detroit.
- justbaker 5y agoWhere?
- macintux 5y agoNE corner of California: 41.994612, -120.001006 Middle Island, in Lake Erie: 41.682534, -82.683679 (I was curious myself, so I went digging in Apple Maps.) (Update: realized my NE corner coordinates were in fact a little inside the border, so grabbed ones even farther north.)
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- protomyth 5y agoOr come to North Dakota where in 1936 we recorded our highest (121°F in Steele on July 6) and lowest (-60°F in Parshall on February 15) temperatures. I once had a grant that had data about the summer high and winter low effects on car maintenance of low income families. Its amazing what such a wide range of temps will do to the employment of rural low income families. Last year's -35°F day before wind chill (which sent it down to truly horrific) was a pure pain in the butt. https://www.weather.gov/bis/climate_EXT https://www.weather.gov/bis/climate_EXT
- netizen-936824 5y agoHow do we know that the employment is directly related to temperatures? What sort of relationship is it?
- robbedpeter 5y agoNegative, for sure. Cars don't start, accidents and illnesses are more common, carbon monoxide poisoning increases, heart attacks are more frequent with stress and snow shoveling. Throw in SAD and vitamin d deficiency - cold places throw a lot of shit at people.
- User23 5y agoMy father used to cross country ski to work on the worst winter days. Sometimes he’d go on a drift right over stuck cars. Unexcused absences just weren’t a thing back then.
- superkuh 5y agoPeople wait for the major river separating Minnesota and Wisconsin to freeze up so they can drive across the frozen surface to their respective jobs and save 15 minutes on the commute via the bridges. It's a popular thing to do especially for Andersen Windows workers.
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- mastax 5y agoMuch of Siberia is similarly far from the ocean and has pretty similar weather, as my Siberian friend tells me.
- dredmorbius 5y agoYakutsk, specifically. https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/527142/what-its-live-yakutsk-siberia-coldest-city-earth https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/527142/what-its-live-yak... https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1KVw7rwaymY https://yewtu.be/watch?v=1KVw7rwaymY
- dsizzle 5y agoI somehow expected something surprising in the article but there really wasn’t (the average temperature is in fact significantly lower in North Pole). The headline is at least not clickbait.
- Ralo 5y agoLiving in Winnipeg, I've had my fair share of -40°C days. I had some online friends living in California move up to Alaska for work and wanted advice on what to expect. He said experiencing 1-2°C in Oregon was brutal, he couldn't even imagine what -40°C was like. They moved there and were shocked at how "tame" -40°C is. Perhaps it was bundling up and preparing for the weather but he said there was very noticeable difference with the humidity that made all the difference. It's almost like another scale.
- orangepurple 5y agoTemperatures below freezing are not more painful than freezing temp. You just reach pain of freezing faster the further the temp below zero.
- destitude 5y agoBreathing in -40C air is a lot different than breathing in 0C air.
- Teever 5y agoHonestly, If it's -40C with no humidity and no wind it's really not that bad. You learn to breath differently, slower, through your mouth in an elongated shape so that the air can preheat before it hits your lungs.
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- Lamad123 5y agoContinentality!
- flomo 5y agoMore interested in listening the related story: "Was organized crime behind the demise of Twin Cities streetcars?" Featuring a picture of the ceremonial burning of the last streetcar, after a tour with local politicians. (Haven't listened yet, but I know what happened. GM did nothing wrong.)
- 8bitsrule 5y agoThe northern part of MN and the NE half of NoDak are both north of the Laurentian Divide. Water flows north 'above' it. (The 'Divide' splits 3 watersheds at once near Hibbing, MN.) [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorthAmerica-WaterDivides.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NorthAmerica-WaterDivides...] The land between the Arctic and the Divide is still quite flat as a result of the last glaciation (it filled up with meltwater for a few thousand years). There isn't much topography to slow the cold air down. Cities north of that green-line have historically been the coldest.
- kyledrake 5y agoI grew up in MN and I just wanted to say that it's generally not that bad, even though it sounds terrifying. All of the infrastructure is designed to handle it, houses are (mostly) designed to be insulated and heated properly, everyone owns appropriate winter clothes, has appropriate hobbies (cross country skiing, etc.) and the very cold snaps usually only last a few days to a week. It's also sunny when it gets this cold and almost never snows (the atmosphere is basically too cold to hold moisture), so you get a lot of high quality sunshine, clean air and manageable roads. Like many things in life, it's all a trade off, and I personally would take it over California smog most days of the year. Some of the cities with the strongest shift in average temperatures due to climate change are actually in Minnesota, because one of the consequences is going to be less polar vortex events, which means the region sees less of these sudden rapid downward shifts in temperature. The difference in winters now (much milder) compared to when I grew up there are already meaningful and noticeable, which you can observe scientifically on the state's humorously named (but I think they recently changed it) Winter Misery Index https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/journal/winter_misery_index.html https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/journal/winter_misery_in...
- packetlost 5y ago> has appropriate hobbies (cross country skiing, etc.) I live in Madison, WI and honestly can't stand even being outside when it's below 40. Speak for yourself, just saying.
- vivekv 5y agoI am from Chennai, India where < 18 deg C is once a few days in a year event. I spent 3 months in MSP working with one of the large retailers. Their offices were in a set of buildings and as a contractor had to park the car in the parking lot and take the shuttle into the office. It was miserably cold and you come back to frozen keylocks or worse batteries. But the entire town just worked during the cold weather. Amazing!
- raldi 5y agoCan someone who can get through the paywall summarize the clickbait antidote?