It's cold in Idaho....

Potato crop is threatened...

Record-low temperatures in southwestern Idaho are threatening to destroy at least a portion of this season's crop of seed potatoes.

Spuds still in the ground could be saved by a layer of snow; a dusting had fallen on Bozeman and the surrounding region by Sunday.

Nina Zydak, director of the Montana State University Potato Lab, said most area farmers have already started digging.

But many farmers expect to lose some of their potatoes.

"It's over," Larry Van Dyke, who owns Van Dyke Farms in Townsend, told the Bozeman Chronicle.

He says when it's this cold for too long, the frost penetrates and the taters are toast.

The main goal now is to make sure the spoiled potatoes don't make it into his cellar.

Temperatures on Saturday evening dipped to 17 degrees; the last time it was this cold, this early, in southwestern Idaho was more than two decades ago, in 1985.