Heroic winters at the NSC? Not so much this year.

By Barclay Kruse, NSC Chief Communications Officer

We know that many of you who visit the NSC in the summer, during Schwan's USA CUP for example, are curious about what the NSC campus looks like in the winter. From time to time on this blog, we've posted photos of recognizable landmarks around the campus buried in snow. It's fun for us, because Minnesotans are not, by nature, overly dramatic folks. So sharing a little bit of weather drama makes us feel a bit heroic!

And I'm here to tell you last winter was the real deal, a heroic winter. During the 2010-11 winter, the Twin Cities received nearly 90 inches of snow, making it the fourth snowiest winter on record.

But Minnesota winters aren't always like that. Just to prove it, I took a walk around the campus today. I went without a coat, because the temperature topped out at 46F! To date this winter we've received just 10 inches of snow (compared to 44 inches on this date last year), and most of that 10 inches has melted long ago. Take a look at some of the photos I shot on my walk, compared to the same scenes about one year ago.

First, here's the one plowed lane through our main parking lot in early January 2011:

And the same scene today:

And the C fields a year ago:

And today: (No, we're not scheduling games outdoors, but we probably could!)

And finally, the Super Rink parking lot last winter:
And today:

But don't dispair snow lovers. The odds are the NSC will get a snow dumping at some point this winter. And we'll be there to heroically bring you the photo evidence!