Winter In Minnesota: Colder Than Alaska? You Betcha!

Ahh, winter in Minnesota. The snow. The dangerous wind chills. The "It's sooo cold..." jokes. And the inevitable comparisons of how cold it REALLY is here in the Land of 10,000 (now frozen) Lakes, compared to other parts of the country. Sure, it's cold here. But it can't be colder than it is in Alaska... can it?

Turns out, it can-- and it is. As of just after noon today, the temperature at Rochester International was a balmy 5 above. According to the National Weather Service, that was also our predicted high temperature for the day. Meanwhile, in Anchorage, Alaska (where it was just before 9am), the temperature was 4 degrees. Ah ha! So It IS colder in Alaska, right? Not really. The forecast high in Anchorage today calls for a balmy 13 degrees-- 8 whole degrees warmer than here.

And while our low tonight is going to drop to near 14 BELOW ZERO (with a Wind Chill Warning in effect); in Anchorage, it's only going to get down to 4...above. And tomorrow, while it's only supposed to reach 8 BELOW ZERO for our high here in Minnesota, Anchorage will be enjoying a relative heat wave, with a high predicted near 20 degrees.

So just how cold is it in our neck of the woods? It was cold enough that my iPhone, which was in my jacket pocket while I shoveled the driveway this morning, reached a cold enough temperature that it wouldn't work. But the error message-- no doubt created by Apple's programmers out in California-- said the phone needed to "cool down" before it would work. Cool down?!? Geez, that means it's so cold here, Apple doesn't even have an error message for a phone that needs to warm up-- the only temperature warning screen is for when it gets too hot!