Iowans brace for coldest weather in 13 years / QCTimes.com

DES MOINES, Iowa - Iowans are bracing for the coldest weather in 13 years as temperatures are expected to plunge to minus 20 or lower in many areas of the state by Thursday morning.

Rich Kinney, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Johnston, said overnight lows should approach or beat record lows across much of Iowa as temperatures drop to their lowest levels since January 1996.

A village in peril

Nicholas Tucker, Sr. who is a resident of Emmonak, a village of about 800 people in Western Alaska, wrote a letter to the people of Alaska, pleading for help to heat and feed his village.

Tucker said that the village is experiencing an unprecedented fuel and food crisis due to a salmon disaster last summer, extreme cold, and crippling fuel prices. Tucker has been a full time resident of the village since 1971, after he returned from fighting in the Vietnam War. He writes that this is the first time that he’s had to decided between buying food or fuel for his family. “Couple of weeks ago, our 8-year old son had to go to bed hungry,” he writes.

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We are Inuit who live and thrive on ice and snow. We thrive on it being frozen. That is what our culture depends upon. In essence we are fighting for our right to be cold.