By Natalie Bazinet
Staff Writer
The County may have pulled out of its weekend cold snap with nearly 40 degree temperatures on Monday (warm enough for rain), but the precursor to Monday’s warmth were temperatures in the double-digit negatives from northern to southern Aroostook over the weekend.
Plummeting temperatures even broke a record in Houlton; the previous Jan. 22 record of minus 20, set in 1972, was bested by Sunday’s negative 23 mercury reading, according to data from the National Weather Service office in Caribou. The record-breaking number was the coldest temperature Houlton experienced during the weekend’s cold snap.
Throughout the county, Sunday’s temperatures were the lowest communities experienced in the past week, falling as low as minus 23 in Caribou and 26 below zero in Presque Isle. It only took a day for the Star City to heat up 65 degrees, though ‘heat up’ may be considered a relative misnomer as the temperature went from Sunday’s low of negative 26 to Monday’s high of 39 degrees.
Caribou’s temperatures shifted with just slightly less intensity, form Sunday’s low of minus 23 to Monday’s high of 35 degrees.
Houlton’s record breaking 23 below on Sunday was countered by Monday’s high of 38 degrees.
Tuesday brought around dense fog for most of the region that had visibility down to a fourth of a mile, as recorded for Caribou for most of the morning.
“The fog is due to warm air moving over the snowpack,” explained Warning Coordination Meteorologist Noelle Runyan. “You get a lot of extra moisture in the air. Changes in elevation will affect it, too.”
