By Ben Rodgers
Editor
On the bright side, at least it was a dry cold.
It’s not often that Green Bay is colder than the South Pole, but that was the case last week.
Throw a blizzard in before the cold snap and we are reminded just how harsh Mother Nature can be.
To give you an idea of how cold negative 50 really is, frostbite can occur within 5-10 minutes on exposed skin.
At this temperature, salt on roads doesn’t do anything because it’s too cold for a chemical reaction.
At times visibility was non-existent and Green Bay seemed to only exist as an act of defiance that people could live here.
So it’s no wonder area schools and businesses closed their doors, and anyone with a modicum of intelligence stayed home under a blanket in front of the fireplace.
The governor even declared a state of emergency for all of Wisconsin.
You know it’s officially bad when Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and UW-Green Bay cancel classes.
The Green Bay Police Department even had a little fun and placed a ban on all illegal activities (punishable by citations, fines and/or jail time) during the cold snap.
Unfortunately, some of us have jobs that require our presence, regardless of the Hoth-like state that entombed itself on Wisconsin.
That means vehicles on roads (and in ditches). Interstate 41 had nearly 50 in the ditch between Green Bay and Appleton on Tuesday.
But there are a handful of extremely dedicated people required to keep society from collapsing.
I’d personally like to thank the plow and tow truck drivers, law enforcement officers, medical staff, mail carriers and anyone else who put their skin on the line during this cold snap.
From a newspaper perspective, cold weather doesn’t stop the news from happening. It just kind of slows it down.
Multi-Media Channels (The Press Times’ parent company) closed all offices around the state due to cold, as we put out newspapers from home.
As a weekly publication missing one day doesn’t mean the end of the world for us. It just means we have to pick it up the next day.
If you are reading this later than your normal delivery date I’d like to apologize, but for the reasons listed above there may have been a delay.
I remember in North Dakota, we had cold like this a couple of times each winter.
On the empty prairie the wind tends to pick up speed and howl as snow drifts take over the roadways, but the news doesn’t stop.
I layered everything, put on my big boots, and struggled to drive the 2 miles to the office as shifting with a manual on the Arctic Circle is not what GMC intended it’s trucks to be used for.
Only to get to the office and call the city engineer for a comment to hear him tell me “You shouldn’t be out moving around in this kind of weather!”
But, the world has to keep turning and as always, certain people need to do be there to work the crank.