Dangerous Cold Descends on Maine (Here we go again..)

Portland (Maine) Press Herald ^ | 02/13/03 | Joshua Weinstein

[NewHampshireDuo]

Take a sweater. And a parka. And gloves and boots and a hat and a scarf and long underwear and any other warm thing you can think of. Today will be spectacularly, brutally cold and beastly windy.

Tonight will be worse and Friday will be about as harsh.

Northern New England will be the coldest place in the country today and Friday, Bob Marine, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Gray, said Wednesday. That means the warmest Portland will get is about 10 degress.

"You combine the wind and temperatures and wind chills are going to be around minus 30," Marine said.

Tonight, that may sound warm.

Actual temperatures tonight - not wind-chill, but thermometer readings - will be minus 10 to minus 20, Marine said.

"That's really going to make it difficult," he said. "It's bad enough that it's that cold, but when you add wind to it, it's very hard when it's 10 to 20 below out and it's windy. That's tough to take."

Marine said Maine people already know to dress in layers, to get pets indoors and to not particularly count on their cars, but he said it's worth reminding.

"Anyone with a weak battery," he said, "they might find out how weak it was by Thursday morning."

Dr. Dora Mills, the director of the Maine Bureau of Health, said her concern about the cold - besides people getting really cold - is that they may unintentionally poison themselves with carbon dioxide in their attempt to keep warm.

"Especially," she said, "with the price of oil having risen so dramatically."

Mills said some people attempt to heat their homes by turning on a gas stove or oven. A bad idea, she said.

"That is a very dangerous method of heating your house," she said.

Meteorologists say this hard cold snap will stick around for the next few days. Highs Monday will be in the 20s, highs Tuesday will be around 30 and highs Wednesday might break the freezing mark.

[NewHampshireDuo]

Meanwhile from the Union Leader for NH weather: Manchester today will see its coldest daytime high temperature this winter. Today’s high is predicted to be between 5 above and 10 above zero. Tonight’s low will fall to between 10 below zero to 20 below zero. “With the wind chills, it will probably feel like minus 20 to minus 30” tonight, said Neal Strauss, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass. The coldest temperature this winter in Manchester was 10 below zero on Jan. 19. “It will be close to the coldest,” Strauss said. “Unseasonably cold air will be with us all the way into this weekend.” A wind chill advisory is in effect for most of New Hampshire this morning for wind chills of up to 25 below zero. Berlin may not top zero today with lows in the North Country between 25 below and 35 below zero tonight. Mother Nature is threatening a possible snowstorm Sunday. “We could be looking at the potential for a significant storm,” Strauss said.

Not to complain too much, but I think I speak for most of NH and Maine when I say, this has been one COLD, nasty winter this year.

Enough already!!!!

[TommyDale]

More "Global Warming", no doubt.

[caisson71]

Oh, where is that global warming when you need it? I wonder what the temperature is in Kyoto?

[ClearCase_guy]

Republicans are evil for two reasons:

1) They support SUVs and these cause Global Warming
2) They support war against Iraq which drives up the cost of oil, which makes it hard for me to drive my SUV

[LarryM]

It must be that global warming!

[jdege]

I'm sorry, but I just can't see temperatures in the minus tens to be all that much to get excited about.

You're living in a northern-tier state, and it's the dead of winter.

You should expect it to be cold.

I know we do here in Minneapolis. (The forecast you've posted is almost exactly what we've been putting up with for the last two weeks. Yesterday's high was 10.8, last night's low was -8.5. We haven't had a low above zero since Feb 3rd.)

[Bodacious]

HA!!......in ND we've been having daily HIGH'S of -4 degrees F.....Lows are around -15 to -20 for the last week.

Poor babies in Maine......sounds like shirt-sleeve weather
in about a week.

[ricpic]

Reporting in from central Vermont, all I can say is - don't fight winter - you'll lose.

Good wine, good books, a good fire; enjoy.

And oh yes: a good bedmate helps....a lot.

[jdege]

Well, yes.

But the thing you have to understand about people from ND is that their ancestors left their horrible, cold, rocky hillsides in Norway, and crossed the oceans, and the mountains, and the forests, and the rivers, and the plains, and the deserts, until they had found the one place in the world that was just as fxxxing miserable as the place they left....

[Lady Jag]

More "Global Warming", no doubt.

This weather is why Algore had to quit.

[Uncle Sausage]

It's all about oil, isn't it?

[brooklin]

It's cold and blowing here. Usually it doesn't stay this cold as long as it is. The only good thing EVERYONE here is saying is, "thank God this isn't North Dakota".

[Lady Jag]

[Species8472]

LOL!

Sweater weather here in Alaska!

[eyespysomething]

All right, I can't resist. It's, oh 62 or so here in Georgia. Of course we did have a week of below freezing temps last month, which for here is ODD! And to think, we almost moved to Maine. But your summers aren't 100 degrees with 99.99995% humidity are they?
I do feel bad for you. Ya'll in the north have got some constitution, I'll tell you what!

[Bodacious]

Got your racial feelings showing........I'm a North CAROLINA
transplant that came here 9 years ago for a 3 year contract.

You don't complain about the weather that NOONE has a damn thing he can control. You'll always lose.....long live Carharts, Sorels, and down parka's.

P.S. We've got just as much Spanish spoken here 9 months of the year as the other northern states.

[3catsanadog]

Betcha your wishing for some of that global warming to come your way.

[jdege]

I don't wear Carharts, I wear Filsons.

[Morrigan]

Reporting from Maine.....went to CVS around five and it was -2. It has been freezing, I guess we got spoiled last winter!

I hope my car starts in the morning.