Wilson hits 24 below as cold blasts valley
By Angus M. Thuermer Jr., Jackson Hole, Wyo.
December 11, 2009
Temperatures in Jackson Hole dipped to as low 24 degrees below zero Thursday morning as the jet stream pushed frigid air from the Yukon south into Wyoming.
The low reading came from Wenzel Lane in Wilson, where Betty Chambers recorded the observation about 7:30 a.m. The Wenzel swale, at an elevation of 6,146 feet, is known as a cold sink and Chambers regularly sees the lowest temperatures in Jackson Hole. She said she had no trouble getting out of her place and to the Senior Center of Jackson Hole for lunch; she keeps her car in a garage.
While world leaders convene in Copenhagen, Denmark, at a climate change summit, there’s no sign of global warming in her neighborhood, Chambers said.
“I haven’t seen any this year,” she said. “This has been the coldest summer I’ve seen here.”
The low Wednesday was 22 below, she said.
Climate scientists say the global warming trend should not be judged by individual years, seasons or days.
Temperatures around the valley dipped below zero, meteorologist Jim Woodmencey reported, reaching 20 below in Jackson and at Jackson Hole Airport on Thursday morning.
“The coldest I could find this morning was 28 below at Big Piney,” he said. “I think the guys at Moose had 23 below. The morning before, Lake Yellowstone had 23 below.”
Cold started earlier in the fall, “the 30th of September,” said Woodmencey, who operates the Web site Mountainweather.com.
“We had a very cold October,” he said. “October’s average high was a full 11 degrees below normal.”
It might take a while for cold to penetrate to water pipes, Woodmencey said. But there is also very little snow to insulate the ground, a factor that sometimes offsets cold air’s effect on buried lines.
The below-freezing temperatures also contributed to a water line break Wednesday in Snow King Estates that left about 55 homes without water. Town Engineer Shawn O’Malley said a combination of age and cold temperatures likely caused the pipe to break.
“It was an old, one-inch supply line that was all corroded,” he said. “There really wasn’t much there when we got to it.”
O’Malley said the recent spate of below-zero temperatures was probably the final straw for the pipe.
“It’s hard to say whether it just eroded or if the frost got down and shifted the soils around,” O’Malley said. “I’m guessing it was a combination.”
Town staff noticed water running down a driveway in the neighborhood early Wednesday morning and worked to replace the broken section of pipe the rest of the day.
By about 9 p.m. Wednesday, town staff had replaced the pipe and restored water service to the homes that were affected.
“We got pretty lucky,” O’Malley said. “We dug down where we thought the leak was, but when we got down to the pipe, it wasn’t there. It ended up only being about 20 feet away, though.”
With regard to snow, Woodmencey predicts warming over the weekend with some snow accumulation, especially in the mountains.
“It should start warming up [Friday] afternoon and certainly over the weekend,” he said. “I’m guessing we’ll be back in the 20s with cloud cover.”
Snow could add up through Monday.
“We should accumulate a foot of snow in the mountains,” he said.
– Kevin Heulsmann contributed to this story.
