Star Tribune
How are Minnesota’s winter festivals faring in historically warm season?
The ice on Lake Ann was between 8 and 10 inches thick when Chanhassen city leaders made the call. The annual February Festival, and its signature ice fishing competition, would be canceled for the second year in a row.
Festival organizers need between 12 and 15 inches of ice to safely support the people and vehicles that set up the decades-old celebration. But forecasts of highs in the upper 40s in the days leading up to the event’s Feb. 3 start date forced organizers to abandon their plans.
“Our priority has to be safety,” said Priya Tandon, recreation manager for the City of Chanhassen. “I don’t think we ever expected to cancel last year and we certainly didn’t expect to cancel two years in a row.”
Communities across the metro area have had to adjust, postpone or altogether cancel their winter festivals as an unusually warm season has left most bodies of water in the metro area without ice and their banks devoid of snow. Edina canceled its Winter Ice Festival in early January, citing “uncooperative MN weather” on social media. Eden Prairie similarly postponed its Winter Blast event from January to Feb. 3.
“Event planners are monitoring the weather forecast for next week’s event and considering other options for family fun if the conditions are not conducive for outdoor winter activities,” City of Eden Prairie Communications Manager Joyce Lorenz said.
This year’s Luminary Loppet will limit attendees to the shores of Minneapolis’ Lake of the Isles. Event organizers typically place art installations on the ice, where a series of beacons guide festival-goers from one piece to the next. Last year’s heavy snowfall and above-freezing temperatures made for uneven terrain, Loppet Foundation Executive Director Claire Wilson said, which required ticketholders to remain on dry land even though some of the festival’s features could be placed on the lake itself.
“This year, it’s not only the surface that’s dangerous but the ice integrity, as well,” Wilson said.
Volunteers managed to create about 2,000 luminaries last week — essentially candles encased in ice that comprise the various art installations the foundation places on the lake. Wilson said those building blocks are currently in a bunker with the hope that things cool down by Feb. 3. The outlook isn’t looking favorable.
The National Weather Service forecasts highs in the mid-30s throughout the weekend. On Wednesday, it could hit 45 degrees. Minnesota Department of Natural Resources climatologist Pete Boulay says that while the unseasonably warm high temperatures make headlines, he’s equally concerned about the overnight lows.
“We’re about 20 degrees above normal,” Boulay said. “These conditions we see are really driven by overnight temperatures.”
While the Twin Cities had a handful of days with temperatures in the single digits in mid-January, Boulay said that’s especially late for lakes to begin developing ice. Usually, they’ll have frozen over weeks ago.
“We didn’t have a long season to build ice at all,” Boulay said.
It’s also incredibly difficult to predict how quickly ice will build or even melt. Every lake is different, Boulay said, and their rate of freezing and thawing depends on their depth, volume and how much of the surface is exposed to the sun. That makes it difficult for festival organizers to predict how much ice they’ll have to work with even if they have reliable weather forecasts.
“There’s just no way to predict when the ice will leave the lake,” Boulay said.
That’s unfortunate, festival organizers say, because so much of the region’s identity is built on the myriad ways snow and ice bring Minnesotans together. Even though the Loppet Foundation has managed to create enough snow to provide skiers with something to play with at Theodore Wirth Park, the loss of events such as the Luminary Loppet left its mark on the organization.
“I do not think it’s hyperbole to say people are grief-stricken,” Wilson said. “I’ve heard so frequently from people who say they’re, just in general, sort of bereft. Being outside is so core to who we are.”
Tandon, the Chanhassen recreation director, said community organizations including the Rotary Club and the Boys and Girls Club count on the February Festival as a fundraising opportunity by selling concessions.
“It’s just such a great event for our community,” she said. “We’re all really bummed.”
A spokesperson for St. Paul’s Winter Carnival, meanwhile, said much of the event, which got underway Thursday, is moving forward as planned. The biggest difference is that festival organizers had to make the snow that sculptors will use to work their magic in the Vulcan Snow Park.
Star Tribune
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town
LONG PRAIRIE, MINN. — The school district superintendent dressed up as the school mascot, Thor, on football nights. He read the graduation address in both English and Spanish. He even set up office hours in the cafeteria, granting easier approachability to students.
But now, two months into the school year, Daniel Ludvigson is gone. Or, rather, “on special assignment,” according to the terminology of the Long Prairie-Grey Eagle School Board, which voted 4-3 earlier this month to remove him as superintendent. The move came weeks after voting to not renew his contract, which expires at the end of the school year in June.
Four board members — two of whom voted to oust Ludvigson, including Board Chair Kelly Lemke — are up for re-election next week.
The dismissal is the latest blow in this central Minnesota community on the edge of the prairie. Over the last nine months, the town of 3,400 residents and seat of Todd County has lost its mayor, a city manager, two school board members, and now its superintendent.
Students walked out earlier this month in support of Ludvigson. Signs in support of Ludvigson can be seen across town on the lawns of apparent Democrats and Republicans alike. And last week, hundreds packed the American Legion off Hwy. 71 to eat beef sandwiches and sign support letters for Ludvigson, who only swung by to pick up his child for hockey practice.
In a time of great divide in America, this fight has nothing to do with politics.
“You’ve got Harris buttons and Trump hats side-by-side, arm-in-arm,” said Amanda Hinson, a former local newspaper reporter who is concerned the board is not being upfront about why they placed Ludvigson on special assignment. “We want transparency in our government.”
Lawn signs around Long Prairie, Minn., now include people weighing in on the dismissal of Superintendent Daniel Ludvigson by the school board. (Christopher Vondracek)
School board members say Ludvigson has repeatedly shown he is not ready for the prime time of a school district bigger than the one in central North Dakota he arrived from two years ago. They have twice disciplined Ludvigson, but did not state the reason for placing him on “special assignment,” beyond insinuating that staff are fearful to raise official complaints.
Rain and potentially heavy snow are on tap Thursday around the Twin Cities, just before families set out for Halloween trick-or-treating.
Temperatures were expected to drop throughout the day, creating conditions for flurries. A winter weather advisory is in effect from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. covering the Twin Cities metro area and parts of south-central Minnesota. Steady rain drenched the Twin Cities on Thursday, making for a soggy morning commute.
“As colder air begins to move in this morning, the rain will transition to heavy snow from west to east with snowfall rates of an inch per hour at times into early afternoon,” the National Weather Service in Chanhassen said in a weather advisory.
The Twin Cities and surrounding areas could get between 2 and 4 inches of snow, according to the weather service. The winter weather advisory is expected to affect Anoka, Chisago, Hennepin, Ramsey, Scott, Washington and Le Sueur counties.
It’s unclear how much of the snow will actually stick, with warm surface temperatures likely leading to melting on contact in many areas.
“Exact totals will depend on snowfall rate, surface temperatures, and melting — which increases uncertainty with the snow forecast,” the weather service said in an early Thursday briefing.
“Thundersnow possible!” the weather service emphasized.
The good news for Halloween revelers is that the snow and rain are expected to wrap up in time for trick-or-treating, though temperatures will remain in the 30s with a sharp windchill.
An off-duty Washington County sheriff’s deputy caused a head-on crash while under the influence of alcohol and injured a couple in the other vehicle, officials said.
The crash occurred about 10:40 a.m. Sunday in Afton on Hwy. 95 at Scenic Lane, the Minnesota State Patrol said.
Campbell Johnston Blair, 58, of Hastings, was heading north in his Subaru Crosstrek, crossed into the opposite lane and collided with a southbound Ford Expedition, the patrol said.
Blair and the other vehicle’s occupants, 38-year-old Erik Robert Sward and 36-year-old Heather Lynn Sward, both of Lake Elmo, were taken to Regions Hospital with non-critical injuries, according to the patrol.
The patrol noted the alcohol use by Blair was involved in the crash.
Blair, who was driving a private vehicle at the time of the crash while off-duty, has been a deputy with the Sheriff’s Office since 2020 and is currently assigned to our Court Security Unit.
The Sheriff’s Office has been asked for reaction to the crash involving one of its deputies.
Suspect “led us to the evidence” in Montana camper’s brutal killing, initially thought to have been bear attack
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town
Snow and rain on Halloween
Suspect “led us to the evidence” in Montana camper’s brutal killing, initially thought to have been bear attack
Long Prairie, MN school board dismisses its superintendent, the latest controversy in this small town