Minnesota Nice Wants Minnesota Ice: Locals Crave Bone-Chilling Normal
ByMelanie Evans
Updated Jan. 1, 2024 10:23 am ET
Minnesota Nice Wants Minnesota Ice: Locals Crave Bone-Chilling Normal
‘Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a polar vortex.’ Milder weather has shaken up routines, although golfing in winter isn’t too bad.
www.wsj.com
For Minnesotan Tara Young, the perfect beach conditions are when the water is, well, extra stimulating. She prefers the middle of winter, when most mornings she treks off to soak in a nearby frigid lake.
The 38-year-old enjoys her chilly pastime so much she volunteers to clear and maintain an opening to the water through inches of ice, so bathers may plunge.
“I love the sawing and the clearing,” says Young, a mom and retail worker. “It warms you up a bit before you get in.”
That hasn’t been needed lately. There was thin or no ice on many Minnesota lakes in December, and the state’s average temperature for the month appears to be the warmest on record. One can hope this all turns around soon.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky and have a polar vortex,” says Young, referring to a weather pattern that can draw arctic air from the North Pole.
That is not a sentiment uttered in most of the U.S., but Minnesotans have an unusually close kinship with winter. For them, it is a season to escape, endure or embrace. The embracers go big. Towns compete for the title of the state’s coldest spot, thrillseekers surf the big waves off Duluth, and bars pop up in the middle of frozen lakes to cater to ice fishermen.
Now, relatively balmy temperatures and scarce snow have upended life as Minnesotans know it, disrupting routines, canceling wintry events and leaving many anxiously hoping for a return to bone-chilling normal.
“Pray for cold weather so we can go fishing!” wrote Garrison Sports Bait & Tackle in a post on its
The shop on Mille Lacs Lake is about 100 miles north of Minneapolis, not normally a region where the locals need divine intervention to make ice in the winter.
In colder years, owners Ashley Schmaltz and her husband, Wayne Schmaltz, use a heavy-duty diesel truck to plow snow from the ice for fishing. As many as 200 ice houses might dot the lake along their property.
As of Saturday morning, Schmaltz could see open water. Her family’s portable ice house remains folded in their backyard, and everybody she knows is itching to get out ice fishing. “People are bored.”
The local economy also counts on wintertime tourism, so on Facebook Garrison Sports Bait & Tackle is urging anglers who typically take their boats off the water in late fall, to put them back in. “Word is the bite is awesome. We are still offering 20% off bait until the lake freezes!”
December ended with a brief light snow in the Twin Cities, and while things were trending colder, the National Weather Service was forecasting above-normal low temperatures for the start of the year.
The unusual season is, in part, because air currents that deliver freezing temperatures to the state have shifted north this year with the El Niño weather system, a natural warming condition in the Pacific Ocean.
Minnesota’s lack of snow is compounding the problem, since snow reflects solar radiation, Boulay says. Maps updated weekly show snow cover in a pocket of northwestern counties disappearing. The rest of Minnesota is largely bare.
“Having no snow on the ground is a big factor,” Boulay says. It is also eerie in a state where blizzards can strike as early as Halloween. One epic 1940 storm stranded hunters who froze to death. Heavy snowfall in 2010 accumulated on the inflated covering of the Minnesota Vikings stadium, which couldn’t bear the weight. It collapsed.
Just last winter, Minnesota snowfall set or neared record amounts in cities including Duluth, Minneapolis and St. Paul. “It’s almost like we had two winters last year, and that’s making up for this one,” says Boulay.
Unseasonable weather has canceled events that depend on brisk air and snow-packed trails, including kicksledding and cross-country skiing classes at Battle Creek Regional Park in St. Paul.
Also put on ice was the Minnesota Ice Festival, which noted in a cancellation announcement that “the weather hasn’t cooperated.”
Others remain determined. “We are monitoring the temps in Minneapolis, looking at several forecast models, begging Mother Nature, and praying to the pond hockey gods,” said organizers in a message to teams competing in the U.S. Pond Hockey Championships.
The Minneapolis event is scheduled for mid-January on Lake Nokomis, which as of Saturday was a disappointing mix of thin ice and open water.
In neighboring St. Paul, snow-making teams at Battle Creek park are closely watching an app for suitable conditions.
“We’re just waiting for good weather,” says Rob Adams, parks maintenance and operations supervisor for Ramsey County. By good weather, he explains, he means about 10 degrees.
Lately, they have been making snow when a measure of temperature and humidity reaches 27 degrees, the minimum needed. At 3 a.m. Friday, crews got an opening and set to work. Warming temperatures forced them to stop around 11 a.m.
He got some requests from snow-nostalgic Minnesotans before the holidays who jokingly asked him to whiten up their front yards. (That was a no-go.)
Mary Collins decided she would learn to love winter when she moved to Minneapolis from more-temperate Seattle in 2017. Collins and her girlfriend even set their wedding date for February. “We love winter,” Collins says. “We decided to lean into it.”
They have invited wedding guests to dip into Minneapolis’s Lake Harriet before the ceremony, and have planned cross-country skiing for the following day.
Collins is staying positive about the dip, since Lake Harriet’s waters will surely be chilly, with or without ice. “We’ll see who shows up,” she says. “Some people are talking a big game.” (Those who choose to sit out the bathing will be supplied with coffee and doughnuts, she adds.)
Let’s face it, warmer temperatures bring benefits. Mark McCabe, parks and recreation director for Ramsey County, says he isn’t missing “the frozen lips and eyelashes as you’re clearing snow off your driveway and it’s blowing back on your face.”
December rains helped relieve the state’s drought, a potential boon for farmers this coming year, says Dave Nicolai, a field-crop educator with the University of Minnesota Extension.
And Mike Thomas, general manager for the North Links Golf Course in North Mankato, Minn., sold out tee times days before Christmas and piped holiday music over speakers for players.
Eager golfers, hustling to grab spots that were limited by the season’s early nightfalls, contacted Thomas directly by phone and social media. “I turned away friends,” he says.
North Links closed after a final day of golf on Dec. 23, the latest in 30 years Thomas has managed the course.
Greg McKush, owner of Montgomery National Golf Club, kept his course open through New Year’s Day, so golfers can boast they played in Minnesota in January. (Another plus: shallow water hazards can freeze overnight, keeping balls in play).
McKush says the extended season will help finance planned investments.
“As much as I like winter and white,” he adds, “green is good right now for me. I mean in the dollar form.”
