But the wintertime blues disappeared Friday night, Day 2 of the 43rd annual World Championship Snowmobile Derby, which residents herald as the Indianapolis 500 of snowmobile racing.
Jimmy Blaze followed a fireworks display, which opened Friday Night Thunder, by defying physics and doing a back flip on a snowmobile to the whoops and mitten-muffled applause of the 10,000 people who crammed on a snow-covered hill at Eagle River Derby Track. The temperature had dropped to 25; the wind chill made it feel like 11 and a steady snow fell.
Hundreds of the young men and women in parkas bearing the logos of their favorite sled manufacturers, like Polaris and Arctic Cat, arrived by snowmobile. Families, too, planted camping chairs in the white bowl, but while mothers and fathers watched the racers hit 100 miles an hour on the track’s icy oval, their snowsuit-bundled children found a steeper hill for body-sledding.