For every Minnesotan welcoming this weekend's warm weather, there's another putting away skis, skates or a snowmobile and wondering whatever happened to the cold. Springlike temps are in the Twin Cities' forecast for much of the rest of February, meaning winter's fans might be the only ones getting frosted.
"It's going to be 50-ridiculous," said Dawn Bentley, executive director of the Art Shanty Project on White Bear Lake, a beloved event that has artists reimagining the traditional ice fishing house into a conversation booth, a dance party and more. Bentley said most shanties will stay put for now, but she's taking frequent bore samples of the lake ice to make sure it's thick and safe.
It's not just moods that are threatened. Small-town festivals and ski races across the region are in danger of being curtailed or canceled, jeopardizing tourism dollars that boost struggling local economies. Loggers in the North Woods raced Friday to haul lumber from the woods before roadways turned to mush. And the Hennepin County sheriff issued a thin ice advisory.
Others are adapting as winter wanes. Snowmobilers are traveling farther north in search of snow, businesses are beginning "end-of-season" sales and, in the case of Burggraff's Ace Hardware store in Duluth, are making an earlier-than-usual switch from snowblower displays to peddling potting soil and house paint.
Driving the change is an unprecedented streak of warm weather — this month is the 18th straight to record higher-than-average temperatures, said Mark Seeley, the University of Minnesota climatologist.
"We've never seen that before," he said, pointing to records going back to 1873. "We've been way, way skewed toward warmth."
This winter's warm spell has surprised climatologists who were expecting something cooler based on observations last fall.
"The head scratcher for this winter, to be honest, is that starting last autumn we were entering a period of La Niña, a period of cooler-than-normal water in the equatorial Pacific," Seeley said. "The historical tool kit that the weather service used said we should have had a cooler-than-normal winter. … We're likely to have one of the seven or eight warmest Februaries in state history. We've gone the complete opposite of the La Niña correlation. There's something going on with the climate that we don't fully understand."