Bitter cold grips Minnesota

(AP) - The thermometer said it was 38 degrees below zero. The National Weather Service said the wind chill was negative 58.

But Robert Cameron and Keith Anderson still left their homes in the far northwestern Minnesota city of Hallock on Tuesday to meet a group of friends for a morning coffee at the Cenex service station.

"It's really not so bad," said Cameron, 75. "We've got clothing that goes with the weather. ... We're ready and rolling, no matter what."

"It's so beautiful," said Anderson, 66. "There's not a cloud in the sky."

Bone-chilling temperatures were recorded throughout the state Tuesday, thanks to a combination of clear skies, light winds and a pool of Arctic air and fresh snow that fell in the area a day earlier, said Tony Zaleski, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

At about 8 a.m., the temperatures were minus 40 in International Falls, negative 35 in Roseau, negative 34 in Bemidji, minus 29 in Crookston and negative 23 in Duluth. Rochester had an air temperature of minus 18 and a wind chill of negative 41.

The mercury was at 18 degrees below zero in Minneapolis, with a wind chill of minus 32.

Several schools throughout the state started late or closed due to the cold. And the National Weather Service advised Minnesotans to bundle up - exposed flesh can freeze in 10 minutes when the wind chill is 40 degrees below zero or colder.

Up in Hallock, people were scurrying to their vehicles a little quicker than usual, and the gas pump at the Cenex station froze up at least once.

Terrie Franks, assistant manager at the station, had the brutal chore of going out to unfreeze the pump for a customer.

But she took it all in stride, saying she experimented a little earlier in the year and found that good old de-icer spray - the kind you use to unfreeze a vehicle lock - worked like a charm and made her runs outside about 10 times shorter than they used to be.

"Within minutes it thaws up and it gives you enough give in the trigger itself to pump gas," said Franks, who spoke to The Associated Press by phone just minutes after helping a customer with a frozen pump.

"You definitely have to have gloves on because touching the cold metal - your hands are frozen," she said, adding that she often has to run outside quickly. "You don't have much time to be dressing up to get out there. You have customers waiting. They have places to be."

Inside the warmth of the Cenex station, Cameron, Anderson, and others in their group gathered for their daily brew.

"We try to stick each other for coffee," Cameron said of the morning gatherings. He said he met his breakfast group earlier in the day, and most of the regulars showed up, despite the cold.

"Everyone's driving with caution. It's a little slippery. ... We're all survivors."

Anderson found a different way to survive - he's leaving town at the end of the week, escaping to Las Vegas, then Yuma, Ariz., for a couple of months.

"The cold doesn't bother me," he said. "But it's nice to get away, too."

In the Twin Cities metro area, black ice was a problem during the morning commute. The Minnesota Department of Transportation urged motorists to use caution, after a morning filled with crashes, rollovers and spinouts.

One crash, on Highway 212 near Cologne, involved a snowplow, said Kent Barnard, a MnDOT spokesman.

He said MnDOT had 204 snowplows in the metro area on Tuesday. The plows were laying down sand and granite chips to provide traction for vehicles - because it was so cold the salt usually used on roadways won't melt the ice.

Barnard stressed it's time to "slow down, quit tailgating, watch out for our plows."

Back in Hallock, Mark Johnson, vice president of Johnson Oil Co., said the extreme cold isn't too bad, and once it gets to a certain point, the degrees don't matter. For example, he said, 38 degrees below zero isn't much different than 24 degrees below zero.

"We're kind of acclimated to it up here up in this country," he said. "Each year, sometime during the winter, it's going to get to this point. Just as long as it doesn't stay like this for a whole month, you can deal with the day-to-day getting through it."

The forecast calls for a little reprieve from the severe cold on Tuesday night, with temperatures climbing above zero on Wednesday. But by Wednesday night, the cold temperatures are expected to return.

(Copyright 2009 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)

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