The Epic battle for the Icebox of the Nation

[Scott Patterson]

The epic battle continues. NW Colorado vs Northern MN.

http://www.9news.com/news/watercooler/a ... ryid=84426

So, if you ever wonder what people do in the cold climate, we just argue over who is the nations ice box (actually it would be more accurate to say the Lower 48 icebox as places in AK are colder).

Here is my letter to the editor and own opinion:

International Falls is a false claim to Icebox of the Nation (as well an anywhere else in Minnesota) unless the daytime highs in winter are the only criteria. Winter nights in Fraser are still colder and much colder most of the year.

Fraser is far colder overall. Even after the Fraser station was moved to a warmer location, it is still consistently colder. Here are the annual temps for each location mentioned:

International Falls: 36.4F, Fraser: 32.5F/34.6F at station 2 (see article).

Fraser drops below 0 an average of 79 times annually; International Falls 63. But, International Falls is only cold for a few months. In an average year, International Falls will fall below freezing for 109 days. Fraser falls below freezing on an incredible 317 days!

Even more impressive are the average lows for each month. The first figure is for International Falls, and the second Fraser. Notice that in one month out of eleven, International Falls has colder temps than Fraser, but only one month.

JAN International Falls: -8, Fraser: -5
FEB -1/-2
MAR 12/4
APR 27/16
MAY 40/24
JUN 49/29
JUL 54/34
AUG 51/33
SEP 42/25
OCT 32/17
NOV 16/6
DEC -1/-4

Record lows: Fraser also far colder records for most of the year than International Falls. Also notice that while International Falls has dropped below 0 six months of the year, Fraser has done it in nine. Also July has never frozen in International Falls. Fraser has an average frost free period of 4 days, and drops into the teens in every month. Colder in winter than both locations is Taylor Park, Colorado, but Fraser has the longest prolonged cold.

JAN International Falls: -46, Fraser: -53
FEB -45/-49
MAR -38/-39
APR -14/-30
MAY 11/-1
JUN 23/12
JUL 34/18
AUG 30/20
SEP 20/-2
OCT 2/-18
NOV -32/-37
DEC -41/-50

So if your ever in International Falls and they claim to be the Icebox of the Nation, inform them that there are over 100 locations that have reporting weather stations in the Rockies (and even a few in California and one in New Hampshire) that have lower annual temperatures (and that's not mentioning Alaska). Let them know that they may be the Icebox of Minnesota or the Midwest, but not the nation; in fact they're not even close.

So who will win the battle? Cast your votes now.

[RL3AO]

Considering Fraser is 6000 feet higher in elevation. International Falls doesn't do it with the steroids of elevation.

As for 8:29 AM CST:

International Falls -24F (-47F wind chill)
Fraser +12F (+4 wind chill)

[Scott Patterson]

Considering Fraser is 6000 feet higher in elevation. International Falls doesn't do it with the steroids of elevation.

Yes, that's why their often excluded from the national records even though they are colder than other locations. Technically the NWS makes the folling criteria:

The national high and low temperature for the contiguous 48 states are compiled by the National Weather Service's Hydrometeorological Prediction Center in Silver Spring, Md., says Kevin McCarthy, Deputy Director of HPC. The national high and low are determined from information provided by local National Weather Service offices.

McCarthy says the guidelines for temperature eligibility are:

High and low temperature must be from the conterminous U.S. (excluding Hawaii and Alaska)
The elevation must not be above 8,500 feet.

The location must have a population of more than 1,000.

"Exceptions are made for particularly noteworthy sites such as Death Valley, Calif., but are not used routinely," he says. For example, "we would only use Death Valley if the high temperature were over 120 degrees." The reason for such guidelines is to "make the reported site more "representative" of what the public experiences".

Fraser is just over 8500 feet, so it is often excluded, though sometimes it is still used. To be fair though, MN has the added steroid of northern latitude vs Colorado. Colorado does it with altitude, MN does it with latitude. Maybell (CO) just west of where I live is the closest to teh equator than anywhere has dropped below -60 (but not including -60). Taylor Park Colorado is farther south still and is the closest to the equator that it has dropped to -60 (but not below) and unofficial temps there have been as low as -70 at the surrounding ranches.

International Falls -24F (-47F wind chill)
Fraser +12F (+4 wind chill)

True, but we're in a warm spell right now while MN has cooled down. It flip flops back and forth. Right now we're in and old fashion snowstorm, so the weather is warm.

Anyway even with Fraser excluded for altitude, so far this month, here are the nations extremes for each day:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/wext.htm

Here are the states that had the cold extreme for each day:

Colorado: 10 days
Wyoming: 6 Days
Maine: 6 days
Minnesota: 3 days
Montana: 3 days
Wisconsin: 1 day

Alamosa and Gunnison are both below 8000 feet.

To be fair though, it's really the nights in Colorado that bring the averages down. Annually, Fraser averages 50.2 for the daily max. International Falls is indeed colder in the day with a 48.1 daily max. However, the nights are far colder in Fraser. The average annual daily min is 14.8 in Fraser and 26.1 in International Falls.

Fraser gets just as cold or colder in winter than International Falls, but also warms up more in the day. Even where I live (which is far warmer than Fraser) is as cold as International Falls at night, but we are usually warmer in the day.

Actually though, Fraser is only the coldest town with a weather station. Tabernash just north of Fraser is colder, but has no weather station. It is where I worked my first project in Colorado. I had to drive over a snowstorm over Berthoud Pass and the next morning we couldn't start the project because it was 17 degrees outside. That doesn't sound to cold to some perhaps, but considering this was in August......

Anyway, Fraser and International Falls are known for cold because they are towns. Mountain locations are far colder than either place, but no one lives there. Check out these averages for various mountain locations around the US:

http://www.summitpost.org/fact-sheet/17 ... mmits.html

Pikes Peak is definately way colder than Fraser, but no one lives there, at least not anymore. Mount Rainier is by far the coldest known location in the lower 48 and annually is the same as Prudoe Bay in far north Alaska. Believe it or not, annually even Mauna Kea Hawaii is colder than International Falls, but they don't really have either a real summer or a winter.

Anyway, the snowball fight between the city leaders would be cool.

Anyway, I with the two towns could have just a friendly rivalry/battle. I'll still stick with Fraser as the true title holder for the Lower 48. Battling it out in court seems a waste. Maybe a joint icicle festival or something. Us cold weather folk should be supporting each other to get through the winter months.

I also have to wonder if anyone from somewhere like Fairbanks AK or farther north is laughing at CO and MN claiming the slogan icebox of the nation.

[Dionne]

Actually, in Alaska you have to get into the interior to experience the extreme cold. South central and southeast Alaska are warmed by the Japanese current that flows through the north Pacific.

Excluding Alaska, my vote goes for the western slope of Colorado. I have seen snowfall in Gunnison during June. My earliest skiing day (ever)was October 5 at Monarch Pass.

[Scott Patterson]

I have seen snowfall in Gunnison during June.

Yes, June snowfall is very common in CO. Here is a photo taken near my house on June 4 2005:

South central and southeast Alaska are warmed by the Japanese current that flows through the north Pacific.

True. There are many towns in Alaska that have never dropped below zero. There are no towns at all in Colorado, Minnesota or many other states that haven't dropped below zero. Where most people in AK live (Anchorage) it doesn't get as cold as it does around here and even there in Anchorage it is colder than other areas along the south coast. Of course if you live in Fairbanks, Eagle, or Fort Yukon it gets pretty dang cold.

[coriolis]

All I know is that I wouldn't want to live in either place.

[Dionne]

I truly enjoyed my years in Gunnison attending Western State. The college was academically deficient.....which was fine with me. I was there for the ski team. If it had not been for a career ending injury......you could prolly still find me at Crested Butte.

[Aquawind]

It's official: International Falls is Icebox of the Nation
By Curt Brown, Star Tribune

Last update: February 8, 2008 - 5:28 PM

On a balmy, 28-degree day on the Canadian border, the bigwigs of International Falls gathered Friday to celebrate at the Elks Lodge. Earlier this week, the city attorney opened an envelope containing Reg. No. 3,375,139 from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Despite legal challenges from tiny Fraser, Colo., the document confirmed that International Falls is legally, rightfully and officially the Icebox of the Nation.

“I ran over to the attorney’s office and kissed the certificate,” International Falls Mayor Shawn Mason said Friday afternoon, when reached on her cell phone at the Elks Lodge. “Fraser’s actions had sent a chill down my spine.”

From an adjacent bar stool, City Administrator Rod Otterness said: “We’re celebrating first because we’re just thrilled the title has been confirmed. We’ll wait until next week to notify them of their copyright infringement. If Fraser wants to call itself the Icebox of Colorado, we have no problem.”

Out in Fraser, a ski-area town of 1,000 people 70 miles northwest of Denver, both a city welcome sign and the city’s web site call itself the Icebox of the Nation.

The towns have clashed before, with International Falls submitting photographic proof that its 1955 Pee Wee hockey team traveled to Boston with jackets boasting its national Icebox status. The Falls, as locals call it, even paid Fraser $2,000 to cease and desist in the late 1980s.

But when the Minnesota town of 6,500 failed to renew its trademark, Fraser jumped.

“They let it lapse and we thought, heck, if they don’t want it, we do,” Fraser Mayor Fran Cook said Friday. “This is the first I’ve heard of any resolution and I have to admit I’m surprised.”

If her lawyers confirm defeat, Cook said little will change.

“It’s something we’ve always gotten a kick out of and it will not disappear from the old-timers’ lingo,” she said.

At one point in the legal wrangling, International Falls submitted an affidavit from a St. Cloud State meteorologist, who insisted ice cream would melt and meat would thaw 11 months a year in Fraser, while both would be safe all winter long in International Falls.

“It’s supposed to be 20-below with wind come Sunday,” Mayor Mason said, toasting the chill with another frosty one.

Curt Brown • 612-673-4767

http://www.startribune.com/local/15453806.html

Sorry Scott! I know your freezing your rear end off alot, but at least you enjoy the cold weather! Spring is just around the corner.

[RL3AO]

Also a outdoor high school hockey game tomorrow near International Falls. Nice game to celebrate the win!

[Scott Patterson]

It's official: International Falls is Icebox of the Nation

Legally, it appears so. I still wish they would settle it ouside court and in a more fun way instead.

I know your freezing your rear end off alot, but at least you enjoy the cold weather!

Only to a point. I just tolerate it here in order to climb the mountains. SE Utah would be my ideal place to live.

Spring is just around the corner.

Maybe and we hope so. First time we moved to the area I missed my birthday party because I couldn't make it home in a blizzard. I must mention that my birthday is on June 13. Spring can be a wild ride at times, kind of like summer and winter from one day to the next. Allergies aside, I think Spring is my favorite season.

Anyway, here's an old article.

Who's The Coldest Of Them All
Published February 27, 1987 in the Denver Post.
Copyright © 1987 by Ed Quillen. All rights reserved.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

When I was growing up outside of Greeley and going on Sunday drives with my parents, I was bitterly disappointed at three destinations.

To my childhood dismay, Estes Park wasn't a big park with ferris wheels and roller coasters, but just some town up in the mountains. Pueblo was a series of smokestacks instead of an enchanting adobe fortress. Fraser, famous as President Eisenhower's vacation hideaway, presented little more than a sawmill and a few ramshackle buildings; I had expected much more from such a well-known place.

It wasn't just the presidential presence that made me expect so much. Fraser was then the undisputed "Icebox of the Nation." There were competitors like Big Piney, Wyo., but most mornings, the radio weather would conclude with the announcement that "Fraser, Colorado, again had the coldest temperature in the nation at eight degrees below zero."

And that would be in May. Fraser's average annual frost-free growing season is four days long, so even its summers are chilly. Its annual mean temperature is 33.8 degrees, just above freezing. I never realized just how cold Fraser is until I spent four winters in another Grand County town, Kremmling.

Winters in Kremmling seemed sufficiently brutal -- long nights dipping to 30 below, and the high on some January days was all of 10 below. Even so, folks in Fraser considered Kremmling the "banana belt" of Middle Park, because Fraser was always a few degrees colder.

When pressed, though, old-timers would concede that Fraser wasn't truly the coldest spot around. That was Tabernash, four miles down the river, where gelid air settled at the inlet of a canyon. A helper station in the days of steam locomotives, Tabernash was where huge articulated mallets froze to the tracks. Local lore had it that Tabernash was always at least five degrees below Fraser.

But Fraser, not Tabernash, had the official weather station and thus the fame. Fraser was proud of its frigid reputation, which brought some money into town as Goodyear and Xerex, among others, filmed commercials there.

It was sometime in the early 1970s that various metropolitan promoters decided that Fraser was giving Colorado a bad name. On an April day, Denver might be enjoying T-shirt weather, but all that the rest of the world knew about Colorado was the subzero reading in Fraser. Such reports might discourage outsiders from moving here and augmenting Front Range congestion and pollution, and that would never do.

In the interest of encouraging Front Range development, Fraser's temperatures were censored. Then Fraser lost its official weather station. Other towns began to boast of being the "Icebox of the Nation."

One was International Falls, Minn. However, day in and day out, Fraser's temperature is lower. Even boastful International Falls conceded when Fraser issued a challenge last December.

Just this week, it was announced that Gunnison, Colorado deserves that distinction, since it most often had the lowest low in the United States.

Gunnson is indeed cold. Allen Best, a friend who then lived in Fraser, went cross-country skiing with me in the Gunnison Country two years ago. He acquired five blackened, peeling toes on our tour, and suggested a slogan: "Gunnison -- where people from Fraser go to catch frostbite."

Fraser hasn't given up, though. The "Icebox of the Nation" sign was still there when I passed through last December, although much else has changed. The hillsides are full of housing, and there's a big new shopping center. It's the only mountain town I've seen lately where more businesses are opening than closing.

Fraser's mayor, C.B. Jensen, is himself a real-estate developer and builder. You might think that he'd be against promoting Fraser's gelid climate; such publicity could hurt his business. But instead, he's excited. Fraser just got its official weather station back, and he figures on beating Gunnison next year.

The more publicity about Fraser's cold weather, the more the town appears to prosper. Perhaps there is something to the saying that "Honesty is the best policy."

[bob rulz]

I had to drive over a snowstorm over Berthoud Pass and the next morning we couldn't start the project because it was 17 degrees outside. That doesn't sound to cold to some perhaps, but considering this was in August......

LOL, nice. But still.

Either way, Fraser could be considered the icebox of the nation simply because it's in a mountain valley, and International Falls is on the plains (or, at least, it's very flat). International Falls could be considered the iceFIELD of the nation...

[Aquawind]

Front Page of CNN Today. Pretty cold stuff for the Ice Box. -40F

Fortunately no windchill.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/weather/02/11/minnesota.cold.ap/index.html

[Scott Patterson]

Colorado was that cold only a few weeks ago and it didn't make National News. I guess it's just bigger news out there when it gets cold. Now it's warmed way up though and the weather had been really pleasant. Anyway, a -40 doesn't seem like that big of news compared to the all time records of either state (or several other states-even AZ has hit -40).

See here for the coldest temperatures recorded in Colorado for each month:

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0930159.html

Places in MN have gotten nearly as cold as the mountain valleys of Western CO in winter, but interestingly they weren't in International Falls:

http://www.factmonster.com/ipka/A0930193.html