Moscow and the hotel that inspired 'The Shining' were warmer than Evansville Tuesday

EVANSVILLE – If you wanna warm up, head to Moscow.

Because of the relentless cold snap that continues to hang around, the notoriously ice-laden capitol of Russia was actually warmer than Evansville on Tuesday morning.

While our temperatures hovered at 7 degrees – with a wind chill of minus-7 – Moscow boasted a balmy 27 degrees. That doesn’t sound like a huge difference, but keep in mind: hordes of Napoleon’s army froze to death marching back from the place.

Here are a few other cold locales that had Evansville beat Tuesday.

Utqiagvik, Alaska

The 5,000-person city that nestles just above the Arctic Circle is the northernmost city in the U.S. And its Tuesday morning temperature was slated to top Evansville by about 8 degrees, according to the Weather Channel.

That’s an impressive feat considering the Utqiavgik town sign translates its name as “the place where we hunt snowy owls.”

Reykjavik, Iceland

In December 2022, Reykjavik saw its coldest temperatures in more than 50 years, when the thermometer plummeted to -11 degrees Fahrenheit – or about 4 degrees colder than Evansville’s feel-like temperature on Tuesday.

Reykjavik was temperature by those standards this week, though. By Tuesday afternoon there, it topped out in the low 20s.

Ungava, Ontario

A little more than 100 years ago, the sprawling Ungava Peninsula in central and northern Canada made cinematic history.

It was the site of the trailblazing film “Nanook of the North," a partially fictionalized but mostly true account of Nanook, an Inuit hunter who struggles in extreme cold and brutal conditions to keep his family alive.

And on Tuesday, Nanook’s home was about 5 degrees warmer than Evansville.

Estes Park, Colorado and The Stanley Hotel – inspiration for ‘The Shining’

In 1974, Stephen King and his wife made a stop at the historic Stanley Hotel, an opulent beauty that stretches across the foot of the Rocky Mountains.

It was the dawn of winter, when snow and ice cripple the local roads and force the hotel to shut down for the season. Because of that, the King family found themselves as the only guests as closure loomed, free to roam long, empty corridors alone.

If that sounds familiar, it’s because that night was the inspiration for King’s famous novel, “The Shining,” as well as the equally famous film that shows Jack Nicholson succumb to snowbound cabin fever and hunt his family with an ax. King renamed the place “The Overlook Hotel” and made history.

To paraphrase a famous line, the Stanley was the “play” to Evansville’s “work” on Tuesday. The National Weather Service's forecast projected Estes Park's high to be about 13 degrees warmer than Evansville's.

This article originally appeared on Evansville Courier & Press: Here are 5 notoriously cold places that are warmer than Evansville