Brrr, Baby, Brrr: Looks like a good weekend for movies, books and nesting with your squirrel family. According to Duluth’s National Sweater Service – oops, make that the National Weather Service – wind chills could plunge temperatures to minus 35° F along Minnesota’s North Shore during the day. In Duluth, the warmest we’re likely to get is 2° F (and that sounds worse in Celsius: minus 16, which is exactly what the low temp figure will be tonight, but in Fahrenheit, or minus 26 C). It could reach a balmy 3° F today in Grand Marais, Minnesota. Leaping east, Bayfield, Wisconsin, could reach a high of 12° F by Sunday and Marquette, can expect highs in the bottom teens this weekend (10° to 14° F). In Ontario, Environment Canada forecasts Thunder Bay’s Saturday’s high at minus 21° C (about minus 6° F) and lows down to minus 34° C (minus 29° C) tonight. Over in the Sault Ste. Maries, Saturday may heat up to 5° F (minus 15° C) but on Sunday the high stays sub-zero at about minus 1° F (minus 18° C). If you want to get outside, it’s a good time to do that “can boiling water freeze mid-air?" experiment. In 2017, ABC news did a lovely compilation of such videos, including one from the Manitou Weather Station Fishing Lodge in northwestern Ontario. If you are not careful, these also are temperatures at which you can get frostbite on skin exposed too long outside (see the weather service chart) and that are unsafe for any breed of dog outside (according to PetPlan insurance, which also notes that the average cost of treating pet hypothermia in 2018 was $954).
Speaking of Darned Cold: Apparently Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, bike shop owner Jan Roubal, feels bicycling on the eastern edge of Lake Superior just isn't chilly enough. According to Darren Taylor of SooToday, the co-owner/ operator of Vélorution Bike & Ski is training for the Arrowhead 135, "an exceptionally gruelling 217 kilometre (135 mile) winter race, to be held Jan. 28 and 29 in the frozen wilderness of Minnesota." You can run, ski or fat bike the Arrowhead 135, which starts in International Falls; Jan will be on his bike. “They’re forecasting a steady temperature of around 25 below Celsius (minus13° F),” Jan told Darren. “I’ve known about the Arrowhead for quite a while, and I thought ‘Yeah, I like doing things that are hard.’” The Arrowhead 135 might be a warm-up (is that really the right word?) for Jan at Upper Hand Brewing's 906 Polar Roll Fat Bike Race (that's Jan "Superman-ing" in an earlier Polar Roll) in Ishpeming on Feb. 16, which is part of the Great Lakes Fat Bike Series. But first, to the Arrowhead, and Jan's pals on the Vélorution Facebook page are pulling for him, posting: "The Arrowhead 135 is beyond adventure. Dig deep, pack warm and pedal, pedal, pedal!"
Locked Up: The Soo Locks in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan, closed on Tuesday for the annual maintenance shutdown. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Detroit District announced on Facebook that the MV Manitoulin was the last ship to pass through the locks to end the 2018-2019 shipping season (as shown in the photo). “This evening at 9:30 p.m. we locked through the Manitoulin, finishing up another successful navigation season at the Soo Locks. We have a busy season of winter work ahead of us as we complete scheduled maintenance projects.” The 664-foot self-unloading Manitoulin is owned by Lower Lakes Towing Ltd. of Port Dover, Ontario. At the Soo Locks, the vessel was upbound from Sarnia, Ontario, and headed for Essar Steel in Sault, Ontario.
The Soo Locks will reopen for the new navigation season March 25. During the winter closure, the MacArthur and Poe locks are drained and crews perform a variety of maintenance projects. The Poe Lock, opened in 1969, is 1,200 feet long, and the MacArthur Lock was opened in 1943 and is 800 feet long. More than 4,500 vessels carrying up to 80 million tons of cargo maneuver through the locks annually. “The Soo Locks are critical to the Great Lakes Navigation System, and we have a tremendous team that operates and maintains them throughout the year,” said Lt. Col. Greg Turner, district engineer. “While we’ve begun work on building the new lock, it is as important as ever that we keep the existing infrastructure in good working order – this is our highest priority.”
Shore Access: The U.S. Supreme Court may decide what access rights the public does or does not have to the near-water shores of the Great Lakes, reports the Detroit Free Press. The high court will determine whether it wants to consider a case that stems from a 2010 Indiana DNR determination that the lower portion of a shore is public. Waterfront property owners protested the decision, which is similar to access currently on Lake Superior's U.S. shores. The Michigan Supreme Court used the "high-water line" as determination of public access. If the U.S. Supreme Court accepts the property owner's appeal, it will review that determination.
Beautiful Blue: Blue ice is stacking up along Munising Bay on Lake Superior, reports Tanda Gmiter for MLive. Patrick Hugener of Head in the Clouds Photography posted some beautiful blue shots of the chunks piling up on Sand Point. Tanda also includes a great explanation of why ice is blue, as explained in 2018 by the staff at Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore: “Ice only appears blue when it is sufficiently consolidated so that air bubbles do not interfere with the passage of light. Without the scattering effect of bubbles, light can penetrate ice undisturbed. In ice, the absorption of light at the red end of the spectrum is six times greater than at the blue end. Six feet into the ice, most of the light in the red spectrum can’t be seen. A lack of reflected red wavelengths produces the color blue in the human eye.”
Soups, Quick!: Cold weather might generate the need for some fast, easy - and hot! - soups, so we're connecting you to a Lake Superior Magazine story by Juli Kellner, Soup's On, from a few years back with a recipes for soups that cook up hot and good in half an hour.
Photo & graphic credits: Manitou Weather Station Fishing Lodge; National Weather Service; Vélorution Bike & Ski; Michelle Briggs; Patrick Hugener; Lake Superior Magazine