Winter
Video: Sledding at the 2026 Laskiainen Finnish Festival
Videographer Adam Jagunich shot this aerial footage in the small Iron Range town of Palo, about 40 miles north of Duluth, capturing sledding scenes from the 88th annual Laskiainen Finnish Festival.
Bathing girls frolic in Chester Park snowdrift
As an addendum to the “High spots from West Duluth Day at the 1926 Winter Frolic” post we present this digitally enhanced photo from the cover of the Feb. 11, 1926 Duluth Herald. It appeared in the paper with the headline “Bathing girls frolic in Chester Park snowdrift.” (more…)
High spots from West Duluth Day at the 1926 Winter Frolic
Oh, those frolicsome West Duluthians. The Feb. 11, 1926 Duluth Herald offers a slew of photos from West Duluth Day of the annual Duluth Winter Frolic. The neighborhood programming ran from 1 to 10 p.m. on Feb. 10, but Winter Frolic events were not exclusive to West Duluth that day. Other happenings included “stunts” in the downtown streets, hockey games at the Amphitheater and Curling Club, an ice carnival at the Curling club, and the Frolic Ball of the College Women’s Club at the Duluth Armory. (more…)
Engelbert Hattenberger: Honarary Citizen of Duluth
On Jan. 17, 1986 — 40 years ago today — Duluth Mayor John Fedo issued a proclamation declaring Engelbert Hattenberger an honorary citizen of Duluth, “with all the rights and privileges appertaining thereto, as recognition of the high regard and esteem in which this distinguished personage is held by the Citizens of Duluth.”
Hattenberger was a 65-year-old Austrian ice sculptor who was in the city for about two weeks to create art on the Duluth Civic Center plaza during the Winter Sport Festival. It was the first in a four-year stretch of ice-carving trips to Duluth for Hattenberger. (more…)
Become the Dark
It took me 25 years to acclimatize to Duluth, and the big hurdle was these long winter nights. Here’s how I did it.
One day I thought, as long as I’m hopelessly depressed and dysfunctional, maybe I should dig a crawlspace under my all-time low and sort of, you know, make it cozy in there?
Step one: Uncouple your mood from the weather, to the greatest extent possible.
This took me two decades to get the hang of, but it can be done. Duluth is going to give you some ass weather. Conversely, when Duluth is nice, it’s God’s country. But if you let Duluth’s ass weather get to you, you’re effed. It’s a bad place to be sensitive to gray days and one of the coldest, longest winters anywhere in the country, the world even. Duluth in February — when winter is more than half over! — may be compared to the ice moons of Jupiter. And then you might get a chilly summer. So, welcome to town, buckle up, get ahold of yourself, and appreciate the city for what it is besides the weather.
We’re so far north, the path of the sun weaves dramatically across the sky as the seasons progress. You can feel the wobble of the globe. Don’t let it dizzy you or give you motion sickness as the sun stays out a different number of minutes per day. We can have extreme and long winters, and short summers of varying quality. It’s not personal.
Ice Skating Trail on Gunflint Lake
Gunflint Lodge owner John Fredrikson plowed what is possibly the largest ice-skating trail in the United States on Gunflint Lake. This video was produced by Matthew Baxley for WTIP North Shore Community Radio.
Please note the video was shot more than a month ago and ice conditions can always change rapidly.
Ice Spikes on Kingsbury Creek in West Duluth
From Wikipedia: “An ice spike is an ice formation, often in the shape of an inverted icicle, that projects upwards from the surface of a body of frozen water. Ice spikes created by natural processes on the surface of small bodies of frozen water have been reported for many decades, although their occurrence is quite rare. … Natural ice spikes can grow into shapes other than a classic spike shape, and have been variously reported as ice candles, ice towers or ice vases as there is no standard nomenclature for these other forms.”
Selective Focus: When the winter that wasn’t, suddenly was
https://www.instagram.com/p/C49QY2FMIDt/
Select images from Instagram showing scenes of what might normally be considered a very typical late-season snowstorm … if there had been a winter in winter. (more…)
Selective Focus: When Winter Was
Apostle Island Ice Caves, 2014, photo by Chris Plys
There is still time for the winter of 2023/24 to show its stuff. For now, all we have is the past.
Destination Duluth, a nonprofit that shares images and stories on social media in an effort to promote the city and region, recently declared “We want winter back!” A group of photographers have contributed photos from “when we had real winters,” posted with the hashtag whenwinterwas. (more…)
Record Breaker: Winter 2022-23 is snowiest in Duluth history
The Duluth News Tribune reports that the 2 inches of snow that fell overnight was enough to make the winter of 2022-23 the snowiest since records starting being kept in 1870. The season snowfall total as of 6 a.m. today sat at 137.1 inches.
Selective Focus: Wintery PDDs
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cp-npy_uMxe/
Select photos from Instagram spanning mid-February to mid-March 2023, all hashtagged with the name of a certain website. #perfectduluthday (more…)
The Slice: Hiking Kadunce River in Winter
In winter the Kadunce River, an 8.5-mile stream near Grand Marais that flows into Lake Superior about 100 miles northeast of Duluth, becomes a frozen hiking trail.
In its series The Slice, PBS North presents short “slices of life” that capture the events and experiences that bring people together and speak to what it means to live up north.
Video: Sledding at the 2023 Laskiainen Finnish Festival
Videographer Adam Jagunich took his drone for a winter flight in the small Iron Range town of Palo, about 40 miles north of Duluth, to capture sledding scenes from the 85th annual Laskiainen Finnish Festival last weekend. (more…)
Thundersnow in Duluth
Duluth’s Mollie Johnson captured the sounds of thunder during this morning’s blizzard.
Patrick-Duluth way up in the snow
I saw a ship a-sailing
From old Duluth one day,
And oh! it was all laden
With coats for boys, they say! (more…)
Surf and Slide – Great Lakes Now
Detroit Public TV produces Great Lakes Now. The show speaks to me of what we share with other Great Lakes residents and how we should quit fighting about whether or not Lake Superior is the Greatest Lake. This episode focuses on ice sailing, and lake surfing (specifically the Surfistas): “It’s about stoke.”
Selective Focus: Presidents’ Day Blizzard of 2022
https://www.instagram.com/p/CaTOfsHsrmV/
Somewhere in the range of 17 inches of snow fell on Duluth from Feb. 22 to 23, blowing into tall, fluffy snow dunes. Collected here are a few images from around the region, via Instagram. (more…)
Selective Focus: Winter Recreation and Icy Silliness
https://www.instagram.com/p/CYzlINHpAso/
Sledding, paddling, lollygagging … drifting off on an ice chunk. Collected here are a few images from Instagram of simple winter pleasures. (more…)
Red pennants make sliding safe for kids at street intersections
An update to the post “Sledding Duluth’s Avenues in 1921“:
By 1922 it was determined that the safe thing to do is hang red pennants to warn drivers about popular sledding intersections. (more…)
Selective Focus: Snow Day 2021
https://www.instagram.com/p/CYAeLz-MjT3/
A few select images from today’s blizzardry via Instagram. (more…)
Filling Up at the ‘Coldest Gas Station in America’
Back in January of 1997, my friend Keith and I took a drive across Wiscosota and Minnesconsin with my cousin Matt, a California beach boy searching for a real northland winter. Our road trip launched on the eve of the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl XXXIII appearance. A handmade Packer flag crafted from a pillow case was taped to the bumper of Keith’s sedan as we drove 300 miles across frozen farm fields and snow-covered forest to Title Town. The idea was to celebrate an inevitable Packer victory in the shadows of Lambeau Field.
I’ll save our tales of mischief and revelry for another time. This essay is about gas stations – very cold gas stations.
Gas is needed to get from St. Paul to Green Bay in a V-8 Chevrolet. Somewhere in the middle of Wiscosota we stopped at a convenience store and pulled up to a service island. A snowmobile was parked at an adjacent pump and its driver was filling a tank under the seat. Matt’s jaw dropped like he had just spotted Bigfoot munching on a cheeseburger.
“Whaaaaatttt????” he said, as he grabbed a cheap point-and-shoot camera and jumped out of the car. (more…)
Sledding Duluth’s Avenues in 1921
One hundred years ago there were far fewer cars on Duluth’s streets, but it was still considered dangerous to sled down the city’s steep avenues. So Duluth Police Chief Warren E. Pugh surveyed the city and selected a few recommended avenues that posed “the least danger to life and limb,” according to the Duluth Herald of Nov. 22, 1921. (more…)
Polar Vortex
Early morning winter cold floods in through the gaps between the sheet and mattress. The cold is so powerful, so penetrating, I imagine it to be as fluid as a rushing river with the ability to seep into minute cracks and crevices. In the chaos of adjusting the comforter and pulling the pillow into my impromptu cocoon, my sleep-hat has gone AWOL. An instinctual desire to escape the cold and fortify the barrier makes me abandon any pursuit of the lost headpiece.
A new form of low temperature has erupted in Minnesota, a reverse volcano maybe. Not a temperature so high it melts rock, but one so powerfully low it could probably fracture silk. This kind of cold, the kind that cracks house rafters, and spiderwebs the smallest chip in a windshield, has blown in from the north. Weather enthusiasts call it a Polar Vortex — something about the North Pole, and cold, and pressure. But at five o’clock in the morning in northern Minnesota, those technical, and normally interesting, scientific truths can crawl into a snowbank as far as I am concerned. Whether it’s a vortex, or cyclone, or Voldemort’s Dementors unleashed, the only truth that encapsulates this moment is something I learned years ago: “cold is the absence of heat.” (more…)
Winter Sports in Duluth, 1929
This brochure from 1929 highlights “Winter Sports in Duluth,” including the old toboggan chute at Chester Park, as seen on the cover. (more…)