FROM 73 DEGREES TO ZERO - If You Live In MN, You Could Really Complain

(01/19/2005)
Remember those 70 degree days last week.

Now we're banging zero about every night.

But if you really wanted to complain, consider the temperature in Embarrass, Minnesota. It hit 54 degrees below zero yesterday.

Temperatures plummeted across the eastern half of the nation Monday, approaching an all-time record in northern Minnesota and freezing the Gulf Coast as a river of Arctic air pushed southward.

"You keep living, but it gets old after a while.=," said Christine Mackai, the town clerk for the community of 691 people in northeast Minnesota.

Minnesota's record is 60 below, set on Feb. 2, 1996, in Tower, about 10 miles north of Embarrass.

The cold at Embarrass didn't stop the regular customers from getting their morning coffee at Four Corners, a café and gas station.

"Everybody left their cars running," waitress Trish Roggenbuck said. "It was pretty much breathtaking when you walked outside."

Thermometers dropped below the freezing mark all the way to the Gulf of Mexico coast.

The morning low was 28, with wind chills in the upper teens in Mobile, Alabama.