Cathy in the Wright

Shiver Me Timbers

For Southern readers of the Chairman’s blog, here are some things you should know about Minnesota in the winter.

We speak of our cold as “dry” and, therefore, less bone-chilling than the higher-humidity cold we attribute to Eastern, coastal states. Anecdotal evidence supports this theory. For example, I never felt colder than I did in the Army in southern Alabama, when I had to get up at 3:30 a.m. and go outside. (However, that was in 1959-1961, before the Gulf Coast was insulated.)

I’ve pointed to “wet cold” as a coastal thing, but North Dakotans likewise claim they never could survive in Minneapolis, because our cold is more severe, degree by dropping degree, due to the presence of urban lakes and proximity to the Mississippi River.

We’re in for a spell of -10 weather but haven’t had any -20 to -30 days and nights for a long, long time. When we did, the Chairman and her siblings used to get a kick out of tossing cups of boiling water into the Arctic air and watching it evaporate. (Q: What is wethrur? A: It’s the worst spell of weather we’ve ever experienced.)

If you’re planning a February visit:

You don’t need a thermometer to tell whether it’s desperately cold. When you walk along the sidewalk, if the snow squeaks, yeah, it’s that cold. You can’t even make snowballs out of this stuff. And that's why we call it “dry.” Some subscribe to the theory that the red-line for real cold is, when you sneeze, it sleets. Define cold however you want, but never, ever be conned into thinking of an aluminum flagpole as a surrogate lollypop. People who lick flagpoles—usually kids on a dare—wind up depositing a layer of tongue on the cold-conductive metal.

It is untrue, however, that you must carry an ice pick on a dog walk to chip Rover away from his favorite fire hydrant. It also is untrue—albeit widely recollected—that we used to walk 5 miles to school through 6-foot snowdrifts, and that was to summer session. The Chairman will claim the same effect from walking to the end of her driveway from November through April.

Feel the brrrr, already? Why, we haven’t even discussed “wind-chill.” That’s what you get when gusty winds compound the absence of Fahrenheit. It might be a balmy 5 above but—in a high wind—your body is exposed to the equivalent of -30 or worse. When a visiting Mississippian had this phenomenon explained to him recently, he recoiled, “There is such a thing as educating a person beyond his need to know.”

One of my favorite Minnesota cartoons shows the hood up on a car with a dead battery and the driver lying dead, alongside. A tow-truck driver is telling a cop, “Before I could do anything, he grabbed my jumper cables and attached them to his wet socks.”

In summer, you can survive here without air conditioning, if you’re willing to sweat for 15 days of above-90 temperatures in July and early August. However, you cannot get along during winter without a snowblower to toss 6 inches of partly cloudy 40 feet into the neighbor’s backyard.

We define “South” as beginning where one of y’all asks, “Now, just what is that thing,” when somebody sporting a chapped and peeling nose shivers past, dragging a snow rake. What’s a snow rake? Why it’s an implement to pull snow off the roof, to avoid water damage during the spring thaw. Who would drag a snow rake south? None other than a Minnesotan in search of a condo for February and March and whose eyeglasses are too frosted over for him to see the Mason-Dixon Line.

If you think I’m exaggerating about the weather? Read about Paul Bunyan and his blue ox, Babe. Absolute, hard-shell-Baptist gospel truth, it is! And why is Babe blue, well, maybe our cold isn’t so dry, after all.

Posted by Professor at January 24, 2004 11:05 AM