Boil Some Snow To Flush The Toilets- A Totally Normal School Day

Hal Morris

Minnesota is pretty safe, the twin cities especially so. Unlike the towns along the southern Mississippi or Duluth, most of the Twin Cities are protected from flooding by virtue of steep river banks. This of course makes landslides an interesting issue, but efforts at reforestation, reinforcement, and mapping risk have greatly reduced the damage that these do. Our forests tend to be at a pretty low risk for forest fires, given how wet the state is, and we could hardly be further away from continental rifts to produce volcanoes or earthquakes. But we do have one standout feature. That is, of course, the cold. In recent years, with climate change and such, it can be easy to forget just how cold our winters can be. The winter of 2013-14 was a sobering reminder.

A chart showing the temperature ranges of the winter compared to the normal temperature ranges. 

Tied with the winter of ‘72 (that’s 1872!) for the 5th coldest in the twin cities on record, this polar vortex was no joke. While many others have already gone over the science behind them (lots of midwesterners in the class) i’ll briefly summarise. A polar vortex is a large influx of cold air from the arctic towards the south that can cause extreme weather events like blizzards or storms, as well as drop the temperatures to dizzying depths. In my case, this meant that the pipes in my school outright froze. Most Minnesota water pipes have a certain depth requirement, in order to insulate them from the cold. Unfortunately, our small school, converted from an old church in the 60s and built in the 40’s, wasn’t quite up to code. On january 5th, most Minneapolis schools shut down, and schools were shut down statewide the day afterwards. On the 7th, our water supply mysteriously disappeared, a fact i knew only because my mom taught at the school. 

For the same reason, I was conscripted. Some of the toilets needed flushing (ill be sparse with the details here) and without a consistent water supply, there was little we could do. However, the electricity was still working fine, so the school’s kitchen was up and running. And we did have a supply of water- it just happened to be in the form of snow. For 2 days, me and the other staff kids would run back and forth from the huge snow banks in the playground to the kitchen on the first floor, carrying chunks of snow and ice in shovels, sleds, or just our mittened hands. Then, we’d gently place them in pots and cook them down into water that slowly, drop by drop, filled the toilets in order to flush them. We felt like it was essential- after all, our school was going to stay closed for so much longer than anywhere else! In reality, there were only about 3 toilets to flush, but since we had nothing better to do, and were too young to be left at home, boiling snow it was. 

I can’t find a picture, but if you substitute witches for 6-4th graders, i think this image serves pretty well.

Cold fronts like this one usually have far more devastating effects than just forcing a few middle schoolers to play witch for a couple afternoons, however. Pipes bursting, crashes due to snow, and even hypothermia are common in polar vortex situations. The governor issued two statewide orders to shut down schools, one on january 6th, and another on the 27th and 28th. The hennepin county emergency management report called the road damage “severe.” if this happened again, i might be in a far worse position. But 6th grade me, with no drivers license or heating bills to worry about, was thrilled to get a chance to get off school and boil some snow. 

References:

[1]https://www.hennepinwestmesonet.org/-/media/mesonet/Research-Papers/winter-2013-2014.pdf

[2] https://www.dnr.state.mn.us/climate/journal/13_14_winter_recap.html