I was coming back from Beauty’s Barn this evening just after 5 p.m. and saw the dogs gathered on the front porch of Widget’s House. Jodie had just gone over to let them out again before feeding them. It was already 10 below zero and the sun was barely below the horizon; that’s Ovando Mountain in the background, still capturing some light from the setting sun. You can tell from the gathering on the porch that the dogs do not want to go outside and go potty. No, sir.
I reported on the blog yesterday evening that our forecast low for last night was minus 11. Well, it was actually minus 30 when we got up this morning. (For our international readers, that’s minus 34 Celsius.) This is what our back porch thermometer was showing just before I headed out to start taking care of the horses:
To double-check, I went out and looked at the thermometer in the wood shed, and this is what I found:
Our really sophisticated wireless weather station, an expensive LaCrosse Technology unit that measures wind speed and lots of other conditions, goes offline at 20 below zero … now isn’t that helpful? So when it gets this cold, we rely on the $10 thermometers to know what the temperature really is.
When I returned from barn chores two hours later, it had warmed up to a brisk 18 below zero (-27 C) in the sun.
As I sat down to write this post about 5:30 p.m., it had already dropped another 5 degrees to 15 below … but the National Weather Service office in Missoula had a forecast calling for a low of minus 19 for tonight. So I just called the office (we’re "official weather spotters" for the NWS) to let them know we were going to blow past minus 19 in a matter of minutes. They want that kind of feedback so they can update their forecasts accordingly. And sure enough, at 5:53 p.m., we just hit 20 below. It drops that fast after the sun sets out here.
Rolling Dog Farm Blog 
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