Minnesota’s coldest year in 18 years
A swath of negative numbers blankets Minnesota as the season’s coldest air mass to date sags south from Canada. Winter came in like a lamb this year in Minnesota, but it goes out with a lion-like bite the last 3 days of 2014.
It’s not sustained polar vortex driven cold, but a series of arctic fronts will get your attention with a total of six sub-zero nights the next two weeks.
Twin Cities National Weather Service
Cold Canadian air mass. It’s almost a cliche. What did Minnesota ever do to Canada anyway to deserve the cold shoulder? I digress.
-18 degrees in Embarrass, Minn., this morning
-4 degrees coldest temp at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport so far this season
-6 degrees my forecast low temps at MSP Airport for Tuesday morning
7 sub-zero nights on average to date
6 sub-zero nights likely at MSP from tomorrow morning through next week
Wind chill advisories in effect tonight for most of Minnesota
Despite our relatively mild December, it looks like this will go down as the coldest year in 18 years in Minnesota, since 1996.
Warm Alaska
Meanwhile in Anchorage, Alaska, 2014 looks like to first year on record without a sub-zero temp.
Here’s more on the strange weather year that is 2014 in Alaska from the Alaska Dispatch News.
With just a few days left in 2014, it’s all but certain that this year will go down in history as the first recorded calendar year that the temperature never officially dipped below zero in Anchorage, the National Weather Service said Sunday.
The last time the official temperature in Anchorage read below zero was Dec. 26, 2013, according to National Weather Service records.
Not a single day in 2014 has dipped into negative temperatures, though meteorologists did record a reading of zero degrees, the year’s lowest, on Feb. 11, said NWS meteorologist Mike Ottenweller.
