TIME: Almanac 1990/1990 Time Magazine Compact Almanac, The (1991)(Time).iso/time/021389/02138900.007

Text File | 1990-09-17 | 4KB | 81 lines

ENVIRONMENT, Page 65

Even the Eskimos Froze

A record cold wave moves from Alaska to the Midwest


    The little village of Coldfoot, Alaska, 50 miles north of the
Arctic Circle, has long endured jokes about its name. But last week
no one in Coldfoot -- or anywhere else in Alaska -- was in much of
a mood to laugh about the temperature. For a whole month, the
entire state had been gripped by one of the fiercest Arctic cold
waves on record. Some towns in the interior registered temperatures
as low as -75 degrees F for days a time. As for Coldfoot, an
unconfirmed reading there two weeks ago put the temperature at -82
degrees, colder than the official North American record of -81
degrees set in the Canadian Yukon in 1947. Alaska Governor Steve
Cowper declared a state of emergency, requesting everyone to stay
indoors as much as possible.

    By midweek, the icy blast had roared out of Alaska across
western Canada and into the American Midwest. Driven by 100-m.p.h.
winds and the strongest high-pressure system in North American
history (barometers reached 31.85 in. of mercury), the frigid front
generated mammoth snowstorms and in some areas dropped thermometer
readings by as much as 70 degrees in a matter of hours.

    Alaskans were relieved to be rid of the worst of the freeze,
but it would take weeks to assess the toll on the state. Schools
closed, businesses ground to a halt, and hardy villagers huddled
in their homes to keep warm. Furnaces shut down as heating oil
turned to jelly, and stoves stood idle as propane gas liquefied.
The greatest hardships occurred in central Alaska, where normal
food deliveries were cut off. Governor Cowper called out the Air
National Guard to parachute supplies into remote villages.

    Heavy steel equipment in the North Slope oil fields turned
icily brittle and snapped into pieces. Military operations were
disrupted. Most of the 26,000 Army, Air Force and Coast Guard
personnel taking part in Operation Brim Frost, an Arctic training
mission, were told to stay in their barracks. The Kusko 300, one
of the state's major dog-mushing events, had to be postponed.

    Even longtime Alaskans, who normally boast of basking in
subzero weather, were wincing. Says Mitch Falk, manager of Aurora
North Fuel in Deadhorse: "It's not too bad at 45 below, but 60
below takes it out of you." At the Corner Bar in Nenana, which is
usually busy even in -25 degrees weather, no one was coming in for
a cold beer.

    When the frigid air mass finally began to move, it blew into
western Canada, where the temperature in many cities plunged as low
as -40 degrees F. The worst snowstorm in Edmonton since 1885
brought the city to a virtual standstill. In Calgary 100,000
grade-school children were told to stay home when the wind-chill
factor reached -67 degrees, a level at which exposed flesh freezes
in less than a minute.

    South of the border, the cold wave brought a sudden end to
unseasonably warm weather in the American West. In Great Falls,
Mont., the temperature fell overnight from a high of 62 degrees
to-10 degrees and then down to -34 degrees the next night. Over in
Helena, the thermometer reading plummeted from 44 degrees to -6
degrees in just two hours. As far south as Valentine, Neb., a balmy
high of 70 degrees turned to 0 degrees in ten hours.

    Despite the cold front's ferocity, there were few casualties.
In the places that were hardest hit, people were cautious. Martha
Hirt of Fairbanks kept her seven school-age children indoors.
"They're miserable because they can't play outside," she said.
"We're trying to entertain ourselves by watching videos."

    Why was it so cold? While winters are always frigid in the high
latitudes of Alaska and Canada, the cold is usually mitigated by
warm winds from the Pacific Ocean. This year, though, a mass of
cold air called the Omega Block blew in from Siberia and settled
over Alaska. A high-pressure zone got stuck between two
low-pressure systems and stayed put over the state, keeping out the
warming Pacific winds. By the time cold air moved out of Alaska and
headed south, it had built up tremendous force.

    Alaskans could at least take comfort from the knowledge that
the weather could have been even worse. The state got nowhere close
to the world's record low-temperature reading. That was a frosty
-128.6 degrees F, recorded in faraway Antarctica in 1983.