This week, the weather in Minneapolis has been dangerously cold. The high on Wednesday was -28°F (-33°C). And that’s not allowing for wind-chill: the wind made it feel even colder.
I live to move. Every day I need to walk, jog, or ride my bicycle. But this week is different. The snow is so dry, it squeaks under my feet. My face feels ready to fall off. Ears sting, en route to frostbite. My lungs protest.
In a word, dangerous.
So, on Wednesday I stayed home. The furthest I traveled was a little room, just down the hall, where I launched trash down a chute to a dumpster in the basement. Its journey would finish at the Minneapolis garbage burner where it would help to heat 100 downtown buildings.
It’s unusual for me to stay at home for an entire day. I installed bits and pieces that needed to be installed in our new home, but I couldn’t help peering out the windows at the steamy view. Everywhere I looked I could see steam rising.
I kept my camera handy. The following zoomed photos take us counter-clockwise, starting with a view of the Mississippi, looking upstream, and ending with a view looking downstream.
Water vapor rose in steamy clouds off St. Anthony Falls beyond Stone Arch Bridge.
Power poles recede into the distance from a hydroelectric plant.
To the left (roughly west) of the Mississippi, Gold Medal Park, with its mound with spiral path, was deserted, apart from the occasional person with a high pain threshold, walking a dog.
Beyond the park, you can see the Logitech-blue industrial lines of the Guthrie Theater and beyond that, Mill City Museum with its Gold Medal Flour sign.
Continuing left, the downtown Minneapolis skyline soars.
Then, it’s impossible to miss the behemoth US Bank Stadium, the home of the Minnesota Vikings football team. It costs around $100,000 a month to heat the place in the winter.
The next shot looks southwest. In the foreground, you can see a red Sherman Williams sign. These buildings house research facilities for Valspar, a subsidiary of Sherman Williams.
I took this next photo of Interstate 35W during the morning rush hour.
Normally, cars would be lined up at the on-ramp, but not on Wednesday. Schools, universities, and many businesses had opted to remain closed. Even the postal service was not delivering.
Beyond the Interstate distant homes were lost in clouds.
I took this final photograph in the early morning.
The tall chimney belongs to a hospital. Towards the bottom left, you can see the silhouette of Northern Pacific Bridge Number 9 crossing the Mississippi. When its warmer, I love to cycle across this traffic-free former railroad bridge. Much of the dark area at the bottom of the photo is the University of Minnesota West Bank Campus. There’s not much steam rising there, because the campus is heated by a district heating plant situated on the other side of the Mississippi.
The next day, I just had to move, so I went for a five-mile walk through the Minneapolis Skyway system. I prefer to walk on streets, but it felt good to walk through my steamy city with my down jacket over one arm.
