Feeling the sting of cold while trotting from your warm car to the warm office?
Suck it up, Buttercup. In spite of gusting winds and brutally cold temperatures, business went on as usual Thursday and plenty of folks were outside working in arctic conditions.
“Oh, man. It’s frigid,” said Luke Coburn of Auburn.
Luke is one of those guys who rides on the back of the garbage truck as the Pine Tree Waste fleet gathers trash from across the area.
“You learn to dress for it,” he said. “You’ve got to try to keep the wind off your extremities. You’ve got to bundle up in layers and you’ve got to keep your feet as dry as possible. Then you have 50 pounds of gear on you and it just wears your body out.”
Not that Coburn is complaining, mind you. He’s been on the job 17 years and he loves it — even when the wind is fierce and the cold is bitter.
“It makes you strong,” Coburn said.
Bill Lepack of Livermore must be pretty strong, as well. He spent most of the day in a boom lift caulking windows. The way Lepack described the cold cannot be stated in a family newspaper.
In the middle of the afternoon Thursday, it was 19 degrees in the Twin Cities. That’s cold, sure, but within a few hours, most people would recall such lofty temperatures with fondness and longing.
As predicted, temperatures plummeted later in the day and around the region folks were doing a variety of things to cope.
“Rice bags, two pairs of pants, don’t let any pipes freeze,” suggested Annamarie Pair of Lewiston.
Rice bags, by the way, are cloth sacks filled with rice that can be heated in the microwave and then used as long-lasting heat packs.
“Park vehicles so wind hits the trunk,” advised Lorelei Lowell of Pownal. “Put (a large) sock full of kitty litter on dashboard to diminish a frosty windshield. Grab your wool sweater and put an extra blanket on bed, not to mention flannel nightie, warm socks and a cap.”
“I wear extra layers, keep my gas tank above half a tank and make sure my tires are properly inflated,” said Erica Edwards of South Woodstock. “My amazing alpaca wool gloves got a hole in them today, though.”
“I’m worried about kids at bus stops,” said Melanie R. Janisch of Nashua, New Hampshire. “Some of the buses come so early in the morning when it’s not even light out and what if the bus is late? Some parents send the kid out without gloves.”
To that end, school officials in the Oxford Hills School District announced early Thursday night that they will delay the start of school on Friday by two hours.
“We anticipate there being some difficulty in starting our bus fleet in the cold,” Superintendent Richard Colpitts wrote in a memo. There are concerns about the number of students who must walk or wait at bus stops in subzero temperatures, the memo states.
It wasn’t a day for walking, if it could be avoided. Taxicab companies around the area reported brisk business.
“We’ve been right out straight, that’s for sure,” said a dispatcher at City Cab in Lewiston around 4 p.m. “We’ve got a half-hour wait right now.”
By nightfall, the temperature in the Lewiston area was down near zero. In weather circles, though, it’s more about “apparent temperature” these days. That’s the latest buzzword used to describe the cold as its perceived by the average human. It takes into account the combined effect of wind speed, air temp and humidity.
The apparent temperature on Thursday was almost hard to believe. In Lewiston, it was forecast to reach minus 22 degrees overnight. In the mountains, it was expected to be in the area of 40 degrees below zero.
“Cold and windy tonight,” advised the National Weather Service in Gray. “Stay warm and check on friends, neighbors and pets.”
It was windy, all right. Winds across the area were moving at between 15 and 20 mph throughout the day, weather officials said, with gusts of up to 45 mph.
According to the Weather Service, it wasn’t just a cold front but a series of them sweeping through the region that caused such numbing temperatures and dangerously cold wind chills.
“A series of powerful arctic cold fronts will deliver a frigid air mass to the region this evening,” the NWS wrote in its wind chill advisory, in effect until Friday morning. “Bitterly cold air temperatures combined with strong northwest winds will produce dangerously cold wind chills.”
Fire officials were also cautioning about the potential dangers of alternative heating sources. In Turner, fire marshals are investigating the death of a 52-year-old man whose body was found inside a camper which had been warmed by two kerosene heaters. Investigators are attempting to determine if one of the heaters may have malfunctioned.
In Lewiston, fire officials were issuing the usual cautions against using ovens to heat apartments, using extension cords with space heaters and using unvented heating appliances inside a building.
Not everyone was bemoaning the cold weather, though. At Sugarloaf USA ski area in Carrabassett Valley, crews kept on making snow and skiers continued up and down the mountain.
“Today was one of those days,” Sugarloaf officials wrote on their afternoon mountain report, “where you got a little chilly on the lift, but were sweating by the end of each run and ready to hop back on the lift for another helping of near-perfect snow.”
Meanwhile, if you have to be out in the cold to make a living, Dave Marquis of Lewiston suggests that it can go one of two ways.
“The cold is a fact of life for people in Maine. You can be a victim to it or conquer it,” he said. “I choose to be victorious. As a contractor, I always have extra clothing, gloves, socks and hoodies in the truck. I raised my children to dress and be prepared for the weather.”
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