Your forecast
Mainly cloudy with a 60 per cent chance of flurries. A blowing snow advisory is in effect for Winnipeg. Wind from the northwest at 60 km/h gusting to 80 becoming north at 40 gusting to 60 late this afternoon. Temperature falling to -14 this afternoon. Wind chill -23 this morning and -30 this afternoon. Risk of frostbite.
Weather conditions may result in school closures; see this map of Manitoba school divisions, and select a division to see the most recent announcements.
Highway conditions, including closures, can be found on this interactive highway map.
What’s happening today
The business community is ramping up pressure on the federal government to intervene in the ongoing Canada Post strike, which is on its 20th day. The Canadian Press has more here.
(Sean Kilpatrick / The Canadian Press files)
Today’s must-read
Manitoba is establishing a trade office on Capitol Hill to keep a “permanent presence” in the United States during Donald Trump’s presidency.
Premier Wab Kinew announced the new office in Washington, D.C., during his state of the province address Tuesday. He called it “particularly well timed” considering recent talks between Canada and the U.S. over Trump’s threat to impose a 25 per cent tariff on all Canadian goods after he is sworn into office in January.
“The tariffs thing? Yeah, we do need to take it serious,” Kinew told hundreds of stakeholders, business leaders and politicians gathered inside the RBC Convention Centre. Tyler Searle has the story.
Premier Wab Kinew gives his state of the province speech at the RBC Convention Centre on Tuesday. (Mikaela MacKenzie / Free Press)
On the bright side
Ed Kranz set up his mobile sauna next to a frozen beach at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan, Minnesota, on a bone-chilling Sunday morning during a weekend cold snap.
Ed and his wife Colleen own Saunable, “a wood-fired sauna experience on wheels.” After about 8 to 12 minutes of sweating in the Kranz’s 85 C sauna, a group moseyed outside into a 9 C Minnesota afternoon. They sat around a fire in bathing suits to gradually lower their body temperatures before repeating the process three or four more times. One brave soul submerged himself into a hole in the frozen lake for a post-sauna cold plunge.
The group was not alone. As temperatures drop into the teens, Minnesotans are embracing sauna culture for warmth and community. Devotees say the state’s sauna mania is about more than sweat and snow — it is the product of Old World traditions intersecting with newfangled internet-based communities, and a desire for social connection in a society that can feel isolating. The Associated Press has more here.
Jeff Tait, of Hastings, Minn., cools off after a session in a Saunable mobile sauna at Lebanon Hills Regional Park in Eagan, Minn. on Sunday. (Mark Vancleave / The Associated Press)
If you’re looking for a local option, Gabrielle Piché has a story about a portable outdoor sauna set up by the duck pond at Assiniboine Park. “We expect there to be a pretty high demand of people wanting to come out,” said Cristen Hamed, co-owner of the Backyard Barrel. Read more here.
The Backyard Barrel will station itself in the Cargo Bar’s patio at Assiniboine Park every weekend this winter. (Supplied)
On this date
On Dec. 4, 1940: The Winnipeg Free Press reported in Switzerland, another Axis conference was imminent in Munich, where the Vichy government of occupied France was expected to clarify its position toward the Axis powers. Meanwhile, diplomatic sources said a rift was widening between Adolf Hitler’s Germany and Benito Mussolini’s Italy. The United States was considering financial aid to Great Britain as the undersecretary of the British treasury visited Washington, D.C. Canadian troops in Iceland opened fire on a Nazi plane in November, it was reported, but it escaped. Read the rest of this day’s paper here. Search our archives for more here.
Today’s front page
Get the full story: Read today’s e-edition of the Free Press.
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