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How cold was it across the northern plains? Bone-chillingly cold. It was so cold that winter weather qualified as Story of the Day. ABC and NBC led off their newscasts with Chicago correspondents. CBS had its morning weathercaster lead off from Minneapolis. All were forced to file from an exterior stand-up. Why? To prove that it really was bone-chillingly cold outside. In both cities the air temperature--never mind the wind chill--was in negative numbers Fahrenheit.

NBC's Lee Cowan complained from Chicago that he was "starting to run out of adjectives" to describe how cold it was. He called the city's river a "mile-long ice cube." On ABC, a red-faced Chris Bury came up with "bitter, blustery, bone-chilling" and "brutal." Dave Price, the weathercaster for CBS' Early Show warned that frostbite can set in as quickly as ten minutes when the temperature is in the double-digit negatives. He shared that old weather reporter's trick of throwing a cup of water into the air and showing it freeze before it hits the ground.

The national angle on the regional cold was the prospect of it freezing on Barack Obama's Inauguration parade next week. ABC's Bury reminded us that Ronald Reagan had to be sworn in indoors in 1985 because the weather outside was frightful. Bury and CBS' Price forecast a temperature hovering around the freezing mark for DC on the 20th, suitable for outdoor ceremonies; on NBC, the Weather Channel's Jim Cantore predicted that the current "Alberta Clipper" will be followed by a "Saskatchewan Screamer." His "first stab" at a forecast envisioned "mid-20Fs, some snow flurries around, 15 mph to 25 mph winds, probably some upper single digit wind chills."


Andrew Tyndall 1/15/09 8:17:51 pm

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