Minnesota's erratic weather

Reflections on Duluth temperatures being in the 40s today

A long-standing joke about Minnesota weather is: "What do Minnesotans do in the summer? If it comes on the Fourth of July, they go on a picnic."

In the Twin Cities, I remember it being in the high nineties on Memorial Day and being cold and rainy for picnics in August. Almost three years ago to the day, I remember going out on our back porch in Duluth when it was 99 degrees. My arms immediately turned red and started oozing.

A week ago many people were outside in T-shirts. Today some people are wearing medium weight jackets.

It's so disappointingly cold that I have come up with a new greeting: "What did you do this summer?"

How cold is it in Duluth?

Temperature range according to AccuWeather.com: -21 to 1. Other sources: lower at higher elevations.

That's not so bad on the high side. We went skiing this morning at Spirit Mountain. However, instead of six runs then coffee then six more runs, it was 3-coffee-3.

We were also up to heading to our cabin in Brimson to split some more wood. But when we got there it was so cold that our electricity didn't work. Well, we don't know why the electricity didn't work and every neighbor we called didn't answer the phone. But since it would be -20 or lower, we didn't want to stay overnight if we couldn't keep our truck plugged in.

Meanwhile, among our supplies in the back of the truck were two bottles of beer and a bottle of wine. When we got back to Duluth, I opened one of the bottles of beer. It wouldn't pour! The beer was so slushy that it wouldn't come out very fast.

Talk about having a cold one! This really was ice-cold beer. The head was a half a glass of slush.