Area digs out from blizzard as residents prepare for arctic blast
With winds still gusting, a Chickasaw County employee clears snow off the Courthouse Square's Locust Avenue sidewalk on Saturday morning.
By Bob Fenske
Residents in and around Chickasaw County dug out from a blizzard Saturday morning, and they did so knowing that Old Man Winter was about to unleash an arctic blast.
And it made for some pretty unique landscape pictures, too.
Take the Chickasaw County Courthouse square, for example. Grass could be seen on half of the square while drifts two to three feet high dotted the rest of the landscape.
Blame blizzard like conditions during a storm that officially dumped about 7 inches of new snow on the New Hampton area, although truth be told, this was a storm that was hard to "measure" because of wind gusts that reached more than 40 miles per hour Friday afternoon and evening.
And the snow may not be over, as the National Weather Service issued a winter weather advisory for Chickasaw County until 6 p.m. Saturday as forecaster say another inch of snow could fall on Saturday. Winds were expected to gust up to 30 miles per hour through Saturday night, causing additional blowing and drifting, before finally subsiding somewhat on Sunday.
Temperatures fell throughout Saturday morning and by 11 a.m., the temp in Chickasaw County's largest city was a mere 1 degree.
That's going to feel balmy, at least for a while, as temperatures are expected to be below zero until at least Wednesday afternoon. Overnight lows will be in the double digits below zero through Tuesday night, and the high temperatures over the next three days — seven below Sunday, five below on Monday and two below on Tuesday — would make the interior of Alaska proud.
That led the National Weather Service to issue a wind chill advisory that runs from 6 p.m. Saturday and through the day on Sunday, but there is little doubt that the advisory — and possibly a warning — will be extended into the early part of the work week.
