Hennepin County Monitors Deep Freeze Conditions

Hennepin County Emergency Management is keeping a close eye on the extreme cold by monitoring conditions in local cities. For example, Crystal has two frost monitoring gauges.

At Hennepin County Emergency Management

Temperatures in the metro haven’t been this cold since last March. A wind chill advisory is in effect Tuesday night through mid-day Wednesday, which will be the first deep freeze of the season. Tuesday felt like January. People bundled up as they ran errands in Crystal. If the sudden blast of arctic air seems a little earlier than usual, it is. The Hennepin County Emergency Management team is keeping a close eye on the weather.

Staff would activate a room with situation monitoring stations during severe weather events, like extreme cold. However, there are no plans to enable the situation room on Wednesday when temperatures are expected to be brutal.

“We kind of pull in a bunch of resources and help distribute them around the county if needed,” said Emily Harrington, the meteorologist on staff. “Our lowest wind chill is expected to be around -28 degrees.”

Hennepin County opened its warming centers to help keep people out of the cold.

Cities help collect data

Hennepin County also relies on local cities to collect data. Crystal has two frost monitoring gauges, one in the street and another under the sod.

The information is useful to public works crews who need to know how deep the frost is if the main water pipes burst, and it’s also helpful for residents.

“Some of our residents have shallow water services, so it kind of helps us flag when they might need to think about some precautions to make sure their water line doesn’t freeze to the house,” said Crystal Public Works Director Mark Ray.

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