Chilldown came quickly

By Mark Fischenich
Free Press Staff Writer

MANKATO December 14, 2008 11:06 pm

— Area residents were able to experience once again Sunday what makes Minnesota such a climatologically special place to live.
From a dramatic viewpoint, the theater of seasons was displayed over the course of just a couple of hours. At 9 a.m., temperatures were in the middle-to-upper 30s — typical of an October morning. Three hours later it was 12 degrees — colder than would be typical for noontime in January.
Looking at it from a meteorological viewpoint, area residents saw the difference from being on the lovely front face of a big low pressure system versus being on the butt-ugly rear-end of a low.
Low pressure systems bring a counterclockwise rotation of air, said Nathan Harrington, weekend meteorologist at KEYC-TV. So when south-central Minnesota was on the right side of the massive low, there were southerly breezes and balmy temperatures that lasted throughout Saturday and into mid-morning Sunday.
As the low pressure moved east, we ended up on the wrong side of the low and the winds quickly switched to the northwest.
“All that cold air from Canada is being sucked in,” Harrington said.
So there’s the third way to consider it — geographically.
At 9:55 a.m., 37-degree air that had been recently residing in such tropical locales as Iowa and Missouri was hanging out in south-central Minnesota. An hour later, winds had switched to the northwest and the temperature was down to 27. By 11:15 a.m., it was down to 21. And by 12:15 p.m., air that had been minding its own business in Manitoba a day or two ago had paid a visit and was planning to make itself at home for the next week or more.
Don’t blame the Canadians, though. It’s the low pressure system’s fault. Remember, low pressure systems suck.
“These big low pressure systems suck the air right out Canada,” Harrington said. “... This is definitely the coldest air we’ve seen all season.”
In fact, it’s the nastiest stuff since it was 8 below on March 7. And Harrington said there was a chance we’d bottom out below that by this morning.
“We’ll get awfully close,” he said. “And if we don’t get there, we’ll get there Tuesday morning.”
Along with the cold, the winds were expected to continue to be stiff with wind chills of 25 to 35 degrees below zero. That’s approaching, but probably not quite at, the level that results in late starts for schools. Wind chills of 35 to 50 below are the standard for late starts, said Mankato Area Public Schools spokeswoman Shelly Schulz.
“They kind of use the same benchmarks, all the schools,” Schulz said Sunday night. “So right now, it doesn’t look like anything is going to change.”
Supt. Ed Waltman will be up at 5 a.m. checking out the conditions and make a final decision. Parents can call 386-4777 to see if Waltman has changed his mind and decided to delay the start.
Delayed and canceled school is almost certain in many parts of central and northern Minnesota, however.
“Up north, they’re really getting pounded,” Harrington said.
Along with cold that’s substantially worse than here, northern Minnesotans are dealing with winter storms and blizzards, closed highways and as much as 12 to 16 inches of snow.
So there’s another way to look at the wintery weather that arrived so suddenly Sunday — with thankful hearts.
“It could have been much worse,” said Harrington, who expected the Mankato area to get no more than a couple of inches of snow. “We’re still going to have to deal with the cold and wind, but we don’t have a foot of snow to dig through.”

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