Years ago I was sent to Hibbings, Minn. as engineer on a bridge job. It was sort of an emergency, so I went out to the job site as soon as I arrived in town and got settled in. This was at around midnight, on August 1st. What impressed me was the skim if ice on the surface of puddles in the parking lot. Temperature was 30° F. On August first! Was real glad to get out of there a month or so later. Had no desire at all to experience a Minnesota winter.
Maybe I should have given this thread a different title. I was taking a poke at the person who thought the MyPillow guy cutout was real. I never expected a serious discussion about Minnesota’s weather. 
And while lots of Americans are starting to see a peek of Spring, in Minnesota this weekend:
don’t you come at me with your bad juju pasttense, i have places to go this weekend
You know what is worse than that? It is alternating snow, rain, then freeze. Everything turns to ice. There is a 4" layer of ice in my driveway in Montreal.
In January 1992, I had a job interview with the Farm Credit Administration in Bloomington MN. I walked out of the airport in a business suit and what passes for a winter coat in Virginia.
It took only about five minutes to get into the car they had sent to pick me up. But I had decided in those five minutes I wouldn’t take the job even if it was the only offer I had at graduation.
I heard that during the recent Polar Vortex extremes, people in Minnesota were talking about moving someplace warm, like Michigan.
Yeah, family in Minnesota, I grew up in Wisconsin. So I’ve had over sixty frigid winters. This one is by far the worst.
The real problem isn’t the multi-car pile ups on glare ice, or trying to shovel when you have nowhere to put the snow because the drifts are taller than your fences. No, the real problem this year is the way the cold has sapped our will to live. I keep telling myself not to make any decisions while stressed, and that I’ll be stressed until spring.
So no decisions like “Do I want to keep living if it’s in a drafty house?” or “Would a nice warm prison cell be worth going on a bloody rampage with a sharpened windshield scraper?”
We had a “Naked Gun” cardboard-cutout movie-promotion guy in our hallway when I lived in a shared house. Only 3/4 size, but then that hallway didn’t give good cues for height anyway.
And every time I saw that guy standing holding a gun in the half-dark hallway I nearly called the cops.
We had 18" of snow over three days here in Eugene OR, late last month. I was surprised by (a) how much damage there was to power lines, flat roofs, and trees; (b) how paralyzed the town was for several days (though we rarely get this much snow so we’re not used to it); and (c) how long it stayed on the ground despite temps mostly above freezing. Item (c), however, made a lot more sense to me when I considered how long it would take a frozen steak to thaw if I left it outside in that weather. A good thick steak takes hours to defrost inside a warm house.
So I’m kind of having a difficult time wrapping my mind around the concept of having that much snow throughout the winter.
“Is Minnesota really that cold?”
Not as cold as North Dakota.
Yes. Yes it is.
If you want to talk about snow instead:
It’s not just the cold, it’s the freakin’ wind that comes straight down from the North Pole. Minnesota and thereabouts you’ll hear a LOT of talk about “windchill factor,” so pay attention!
You can be bundled up in every stitch of clothing you have ever owned, and the wind comes roaring down blowing powder snow like needles in your flesh. And all those clothes wrapped around your body are not there any more. The wind penetrates through every layer, slices through skin and muscle and fat, and drives deep into your bones. Your bone marrow freezes solid.
~VOW
No, I don’t.
On NPR this morning, they were talking about the times it snowed in June in Minnesota. Freaking June. I couldn’t change the station fast enough to avoid hearing what they were saying to reassure me - that it only happened during the first five days.
OF FREAKING JUNE!
Regards,
Shodan
I just lived through the “delightful” May snowfall. We had 9" of snow by Thursday morning. By that afternoon it was 55 degrees. UGH
I spent one Christmas in Minneapolis and MrsB and I decided to go for a stroll. It was a legit -40 outside.
My mom told me that one time when she was a kid it snowed on the Fourth of July when they were setting up for a picnic. She said it didn’t last long though.
That was in South Dakota though, not Minnesota.
Yep, the -30 is tolerable if it is still outside. However, if it’s -5 outside and the wind is 30mph it feels like a constant blast of ice water in the face. Instantly numb and you can’t catch your breath.
A lazy wind. Too lazy to go around you, so it blows right through you.