I sincerely hope that you had someone to snuggle with this past Valentines Day. Or, at least, a dog or cat. At the very least, a heating blanket.
During the final hour of St. Valentine’s Day, the temperature at the Alliance Airport – the official reporting station for the National Weather Service in Cheyenne, Wyoming – dropped to 28 degrees below zero. A new February 14 low. The previous chill took place in 1936, a balmy 22 degrees below zero.
You may well remember colder weather. I certainly do.
On the morning of Friday, December 22, 1989 the temperature dropped to 41 degrees below zero at the Alliance Airport. It was the coldest day I had ever experienced, and that includes the one year I lived in Minneapolis, MN.
I was renting an apartment from potato salad queen Hazel Case at 416 Big Horn. As I walked to my 1987 Dodge Colt, the cold froze my nose drippings. On this windless morning, steam poured from the storm sewers creating a shroud around the streetlights. Of course, my car wouldn’t start.
I called Mike Glesinger at his apartment located near the Alliance Fountain. Mike had traveled to Torrington, Wyoming the previous night to broadcast an Alliance girls’ basketball game and had taken the KCOW car home. “Can you pick me up,” I asked. “I’ll see if I can get ole’ K-COW 1 (its license place) started,” he replied. Five minutes later he called back and reported success.
We stopped at the 7-Eleven convenience store for coffee and then signed on KCOW and KQ 106 at 5 AM. The temperature on the thermometer that rested atop the control counsel read, in bright red numbers, – 41.
Alliance Superintendent of Schools Martin Peterson called KCOW a few minutes later and informed us that he was calling off school and that the kids should enjoy their extra day of Christmas vacation.
By noon, the temperature had risen to around ten below. It was a clear, calm, sunny day, so it felt like a heat wave.
Since weather statistics began being recorded in the 1890s, it rates as the coldest day in the history of Alliance – which was founded in 1888.