WEATHER: Imported Alaska

In a learned paper read before the American Astronomical Society in a cosy Columbia University lecture hall, Meteorologist Edgar William Woolard of the U. S. Weather Bureau explained last week that lowest annual temperatures ordinarily occur in the U. S. in the period from ten to 40 days after the winter solstice (Dec. 21 or 22, day when the sun is farthest south of the Equator). From Montana to Maine and as far south as Memphis and Macon, U. S. inhabitants could well believe him. In two waves real winter cold rolled down on them from Alaska and the Canadian Northwest.

At Mayo Landing, Canada, in Yukon Territory, thermometers reached 58° below zero. Minot, N. Dak. and Bemidji, Minn, experienced 32° below. Iowa, Illinois and the Lake States went under snow blankets as frigid air masses rolled south and east to the Atlantic.

Most spectacular exhibit of the cold wave were westerly winds which whipped the Great Lakes. Toledo, squatting where the Maumee River empties into Lake Erie's western end, was seriously threatened by a water shortage when the wind blew the river water out into the lake in such volume that the river level fell nine and one half feet, within inches of the bottoms of Toledo's pump intakes.

At the other end of Lake Erie, Buffalo was buffeted by 30-ft. waves. Police had to rig hand lines through streets for pedestrians. The wind touched 66 m.p.h. Two oldsters died of heart-failure, one bucking the wind, the other chasing his hat.