The temperature in Rice Park right now: 0 degrees.

The temperature of the hot dish: 160 degrees.

Now them’s the numbers we need to hear.

In contrast to the rocky past few years of warm weather, slumping finances and controversial Vulcan behavior, this time, the St. Paul Winter Carnival seems – oh, please don’t jinx this – to be going off without a hitch.

“We couldn’t ask for a better start,” said Kate Kelly, president of the St. Paul Festival & Heritage Foundation, which runs the carnival. “Mother Nature, knock on wood.”

If things go smoothly, she said, the festival should end up financially in the black – which isn’t always a given.

It’s been a quiet start so far. Carnival officials have no “ta-daaah” performance to kick off festivities, and consider the 5 p.m. Landmark Center party for carnival volunteers to be the real start.

Lunch-hour browsers are strolling the various exhibits in Landmark Center, and Rice Park itself doesn’t have much in it yet.

All the action is in the hotdish tent at 5th and Washington streets.

There, people are lining up to taste the three flavors – Tater Tot, Seafood Jambalaya and Carnival Italiano.

“Hot dish and cold ice,” quipped 64-year-old Denny Robertson, a first-time carnival visitor from Lac du Flambeau, Wis., just before he tucked into a bowl of the stuff.

He and the group he was traveling with sounded impressed with the food – better than back home, but not as “juicy,” whatever that means – and said the temperature outside was perfect.

It’s supposed to stay that way for the next week or so, except for a little above-freezing spike in the late weekend.

The National Weather Service shows the thermometer hitting 34 degrees on Sunday and then 36 on Monday before dropping to 23 on Tuesday.

That doesn’t seem to worry Kelly, who said the brief highs shouldn’t pose much of a melting problem for the ice carvings and snow sculptures.

Meanwhile, the three-martini lunch crowd in St. Paul will have to forego the booze in the hot dish tent today. The wine – including the mulled stuff – won’t be served weekdays until about 3 p.m.

Alex Friedrich can be reached at afriedrich@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-2109.

Copyright 2008 Pioneer Press.