ON A MORNING when we are poised to possibly break a 141-year-old record low temperature of minus 13 degrees Fahrenheit for this day in Minnesota, I bring you these messages from the State Bank of Faribault:
And this is why we want spring:
With the coldest winter in 35 years and endless snow, WE WANT SPRING!
© Copyright 2014 Audrey Kletscher Helbling
Minnesota Prairie Roots 
LaCrosse is at -19 at the moment…..we’re “only” at -8!!!!! And, although the temps will be CLOSER to average soon, there’s a better than 50% chance of more snow tonight and tomorrow night! It’s gonna be difficult to fly my kite with all those mounds of dirty white stuff!!!!!!!
Minus 13 on our temperature monitoring unit this morning.
Tomorrow I will take you someplace warm and tropical. And it’s right here in Minnesota.
Waiting for it (the only place I know of is the Como Park Conservatory…….I grew up going there all the time….especially at Easter!!!)……..
BINGO. We have a winner.
Looking forward to the post….for sure!
Two posts actually. I have too many images to showcase in one post.
Wonderful!!!!
I laughed so hard seeing the picture of the snow bank, with the traffic sign at the top saying “STOP.”
Great catch, Ted. I was hoping one of my readers would spot that. A few years ago snow at the intersection by our house was also banked this high against the stop sign. This year I think crews are spreading the snow more although right now visibility at our intersection is horrible. You have to creep into the traffic lane to see if anything is coming and that is dangerous, especially since I live along a busy street. Visibility at intersections is a problem all over town.
I am sure we will go right from frigid winter to a record flood season all over the country. Seems like weather is getting more extreme all the time either hot, hot or beyond cold. think I will take one of your readers advice and have a tropical day, turn the heat way up in the house, get out my lawn chair, flip flops, Hawaiian shirt and a lemonade with ice. At least for a couple of hours.
Sounds like a great plan. Didn’t you just have another major storm in the Boston area?
Looks VERY familiar. Supposed to be 8 above today so I might wear flip flops! Haha!
Break out the beach clothes, for sure.
If we say it enough, it will come! Yup, the warm up will be here. I have to admit, wandering down the road with our dogs this morning, I thought, hey, if I don’t think about it, I don’t realize it’s still below zero. And that was my positive thought for the morning. 🙂
I need to adopt your outlook. I escaped winter briefly on Sunday. Photos forthcoming on Tuesday.
THAT IS A WHOLE LOT OF WHITE STUFF – WOW!!!
Uh huh.
I am beyond tired of winter and the snow. I have held out on buying a snow blower for several years now. You can get to our mailbox easy enough, but apparently it isn’t USPS good enough. I am not sure where we are suppose to put anymore snow. I was going to break down and go buy a snow blower, but apparently that task is better taken care of in July when they are in stock and maybe even on sale. There were none immediately available to me for purchase this past Saturday. Instead, lawnmowers are in stock and on sale now…in February…in Minnesota. I fully embrace the notion of planning ahead, but these timetables seem a bit out of whack. It was a frustrating Saturday to say the least. The exercise didn’t kill us, but I would have much rather spent the time doing other things. //end rant.
This post seems most fitting for you given your frustrating Saturday shopping experience. You would laugh at the USPS in my neighborhood. Up until recently, the mail carrier would wade through the boulevard snow in front of my house to reach the sidewalk and then continue up the steps to my mailbox. I was not about to shovel a path as the sidewalk does not extend to the street and there is no reason for the carrier to walk through knee deep plus snow on the boulevard, especially since I live on a corner lot. Craziness, pure craziness.
I assume you received some sort of “note” threatening the end of mail delivery if you did not make your mailbox accessible?
Yes. Received the note twice with explicit direction and parameters on what the USPS expected.
Lovely. You would think with the winter we have experienced, the USPS could be a bit more, shall we say, understanding.
I get their frustration as well, but we are talking about pulling up and maybe reaching a bit further or stepping out – they don’t have to walk my neighborhood. A little understanding of the snow circumstances would go a long way.
Alright, Dan, you are not alone. Follow this link and read #2, “Mail Carrier Blues,” in Bob Collins’ 5 x 8 NewsCut column at Minnesota Public Radio:
http://blogs.mprnews.org/newscut/2014/02/secrets-of-the-vatican-the-great-mailbox-standoff-and-the-new-skymiles-5×8-22614/
“Reality and the U.S. Postal Service have never been familiar to one another.” 🙂
COULDN’T AGREE MORE! with the big sign in your post! It is same here on the tundra of Connecticut. This morning it was 1 degree, but I think the outdoor thermometer froze. As for mail delivery, we don’t get any if the roads are impassable-there are about 800 households in my little village serviced by our PO; we just do without and no one seems to mind-but our mail carrier is such a sweetheart, she brings packages inside our garage when she can-so we do try to accommodate her by making a path . I am about 10 miles inland from Long Island Sound, in a belt of coastal land over which the weather can’t be predicted. When it snows north of here, we sometimes get slush/mush. When it’s bitter cold, we get icy moist breezes that freeze the roads slick. When it’s an ice/sleet/snow-ma-geddon kitchen sinker—we get it thicker. I wanted to send you a photo of the snow piled up at the end of my road-but the Hidden Lake Road sign was nearly hidden. Now all this goodness is freezing over and it’s too cold even for the “snow melt” to work. Down to some negative digit tonight, and there’s wind and that just means it’s worse. I have loved winter all my life, lived in Chicago growing up and then a bit south of the city on the edge of the prairie. I loved winter here in CT too, up until this season. It’s made these tacit New Englanders quite grumpy, too. I never thought I’d say this, but give me haze, humidity and swelter; I can always go in my basement and pretend I’m a mole! 17 days and counting….
Deb, I enjoyed your East Coast take on this winter. It seems all of us are weary of this cold and snowy winter, from Midwest to Northeast. My son moved to Boston this past fall after attending college for a year in Fargo. He thought he was escaping a harsh winter. Not so. Boston seems to have had a lot of big storms also. But somehow they seem easier for him to bear at Tufts University.
It sounds as if you have a wonderful mail carrier.
Seventeen days and counting then.
And here I was worrying out our 18 degree weather yesterday! I feel so bad for you all too. We had some ice yesterday and have more now predicted for tonight and tomorrow. I’ve been telling friends here…with a late Easter this year…anything can happen. I’m afraid mother nature is going to have the last say.
Now ice is almost worse than snow, I think. Ice layers sidewalks, parking lots and streets in Faribault as we had rain before eight inches of snow in our last major storm.
I hope your weather warms, too. Remind me again of where you live.
We are definitely in autumn here in Sydney so you really deserve to be in Spring. We’ve had rain for the past week and our days are getting shorter and definitely the nights are cooler. It’s certainly your turn for some warmer weather. There is just so much snow lying around! You wonder how long it will take to melt and disappear xx
If we would only get some warmer temps, the sun would begin working her melting magic. But temps remain below average for this time of year.