Green February a novelty for some, but snow-based activities require ‘miracle’ to go on
Call it weather whiplash, Minnesota-style.
“I call it crazy weather,” declares Nick Giba, from Coon Rapids. “Sure can’t beat this, Minnesota in February.”
“It’s been unbelievable,” adds Claire Wilson, executive director of the Loppet Foundation. “You know, to go from the 50s to the polar vortex and back to the 50s.”
Or maybe it’s just weather weirdness.
“I’m a big snowboarder,” says Josh Broden, of Brooklyn Park. “You know, I like winter sports.”
But not today.
Instead, on this “green day” in February, Broden and his buddies were savoring a near-200-degree sauna break.
“You can’t complain,” he smiles. “We normally get hit with pretty hard winters. To finally have a mild one, that’s nice with me.”
But not so much for Cross Country World Cup planners at Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis.
“So, we hauled in truckloads of snow from the Hyland [Hills] ski jump in Bloomington,” Wilson explains.
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Twenty-eight truckloads, to be exact — about 160 tons worth. They call it “snow harvesting.”
“Just being able to provide a course in these temperatures has been kind of a miracle,” Wilson notes. “And really, we haven’t experienced periods of this long where we couldn’t make snow in the winter.”
And then, there’s the flip side.
On this same day at Bunker Hills Golf Club in Coon Rapids, Michael Culliton and Nick Giba were playing on a “green” green, with an occasional iced-over water hazard.
“It’s not bad at all,” says Culliton, from Mounds View. “Besides being a little hard, it’s kind of like playing on concrete at most.”
“Once in a lifetime deal, frozen pond,” notes Giba, from Coon Rapids. “I bounced her off her twice and bounced up by the green, wouldn’t have happened in June or July, I’ll tell you that.”
But take heart, World Cup fans. Wilson says the courses have at least 1 to 2 feet of snow, plenty enough for next weekend’s competition.
Otherwise, golfers may want to enjoy it, while it lasts.
“We love it, yeah,” Culliton says. “I don’t have a clue what’s going on, but can’t beat it.”