Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Alissa Pietila/Daily Globe THE SUN peaks through the trees in a view from Alfred Wright Boulevard in Ironwood on Sunday evening. Weather throughout the day was variable in most of the Western Upper Peninsula.
Wind chill readings that dipped to minus 40 degrees and lower canceled school across the Gogebic Range Monday and wiped out Sunday's Ironwood Snowmobile Olympus races.
The official low for Ironwood for the 24-hour period to 7 a.m. Monday was minus 20 at the wastewater treatment plant off Cloverland Drive. The 100-year low for Jan. 5 of minus 30 was recorded in 1981, according to Ironwood statistics kept by the National Weather Service office in Marquette.
Wind whipped snow on Sunday, creating poor visibility that forced cancellation of the snowmobile races at the Gogebic County Fairgrounds.
City department of public works sanding trucks were called out later Sunday to deal with icy road conditions.
It had warmed up to 9 below in Ironwood at noon on Monday.
The Bergland dam weather station also recorded a low of minus 20 on Monday morning.
The National Weather Service's wind chill warnings and advisories were in effect for northern Wisconsin, the Upper Peninsula and northern Minnesota through Monday afternoon.
Well below normal
It's starting off as an unusually frigid 2015. The average temperature for the year has been 6.3, well below the long-average of 12.5.
It's shaping up as a cold week, with temperatures mostly below zero through Friday. A high of 7 on Thursday is the warmest reading in the five-day forecast.
The weekend is expected to be warmer.
In Green Bay, where the wind chill was minus 34 on Monday morning, a high temperature of 13 is predicted for Sunday's Green Bay Packers-Dallas Cowboys 12:05 p.m. playoff game, with sunshine.
Ironwood snowfall for the season stands at 122.9 inches, compared to the average of 84.2 inches. The record for Jan. 5 is 160.5 inches set in 1990.
