Icy King Boreas strikes again: Due to expected extreme cold windchills, the St. Paul Winter Carnival is postponing some of its opening events.
The Kick-off to Carnival, an outdoor laser light show, was scheduled for Thursday, Jan. 22, but will instead be modified to a celebration of the annual festival’s 140th anniversary next Friday, Jan. 30. An ice bar and food truck lineup around Rice Park will also not be open Thursday, Jan. 22, nor Friday, Jan. 23.
The carnival’s indoor Thursday events, including a Klondike Kate cabaret night and a Winter Carnival Night at the Minnesota Wild game, will proceed as normal.
“We’ve consulted with the National Weather Service and local meteorologists, and this decision is being made with everyone’s safety as the top priority,” Carnival executive director Lisa Jacobson said in a statement announcing the schedule change.
As of Thursday morning, carnival organizers still expect Friday and weekend events to take place as scheduled, including the King Boreas Grande Day Parade along Grand Avenue on Saturday, Jan. 24. The ice bar and food truck festival are also set to resume their previously announced hours of operation during the remainder of the carnival.
All of Minnesota, including the Twin Cities, and broad swaths of the upper Midwest are set to experience extreme cold temperatures starting Thursday afternoon. An extreme cold warning — meaning possible windchills in the -40 to -50-degree range — is in effect from 6 p.m. Thursday to noon Friday, and then a slightly less severe cold weather advisory lasts till midnight.
On Saturday, the parade begins at 2 p.m. Daytime temperatures are expected to hit a high of -2 but with sunny conditions and significantly calmer wind, according to the National Weather Service. Still, that forecast would make this year’s parade the coldest in recent memory: Since 2000, only two other Grande Day Parades, in 2009 and 2023, have seen single-digit high temps, according to data from the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources.
More information about this year’s Winter Carnival schedule is available in the Pioneer Press’ day-by-day guide.
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