The past few days the temperature has ranged from a high of minus 10 to a low of minus twenty-five degrees. I haven't been outside for a few days now. Not since the day I shoveled part of the driveway wearing wimpy gloves and almost froze my fingers. You know your fingers got cold when they hurt as the blood starts moving again while the fingers warm back up.The local news last night had a story about the Amtrak train stranded in Minot due to the cold. The train seems to have arrived four hours late the previous evening and stopped here as the train's brakes had frozen in the cold weather across eastern Montana and North Dakota. Eastern Montana had quite a number of towns with temperatures in the minus 30 to 40 below range. The train passengers interviewed were not happy. A few even decided to get off the train and fly the rest of the way home even though it was expensive to do so.
Oh yeah! Global warming baby!
With air temperatures as cold as 33 below in Havre, MT on Thursday and wind chills of up to minus 52 through stretches of North Dakota, problems erupted with both rail equipment and the tracks themselves.
Amtrak did not run westbound trains from Chicago on Monday or Tuesday. The train ran on Wednesday, then was suspended from going any farther west than Minneapolis on Thursday. There was no service Friday or today.
On the eastbound route there was no service beyond Whitefish Thursday through today.
Even though the National Weather Service forecasts warmer weather along much of the Empire Builder route in the coming days, an Amtrak spokesman said he couldn’t predict what will happen.
It appears I made the journey from Minnesota to North Dakota just in time on Sunday before Amtrak stopped running trains. I know on the train I did take the train attendants had left the doors under the bathroom sinks open in an effort to prevent their pipes from freezing.
Monday I take the train back to Montana. I hope everything is straightened out by then and the trains are running again.
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