Cold? Do You Think It’s Cold?

The current temperature here in the Minneapolis suburbs is ten degrees below zero. The high today was three or four degrees. Last night it got down to twenty below zero. So it’s winter; what else is new? The snow in my neighborhood is piled as much as twelve feet high.

The national pond hockey tournament is in progress on one or more Minneapolis lakes, which, of course, are frozen solid. In past years, my friend and occasional radio co-host Chad Doughty has participated in the pond hockey tournament. His email address–rightwinger 23–captures both his political orientation and his hockey position. This is a screen grab from a video of today’s pond hockey action in Minneapolis, with the temperature right around zero degrees fahrenheit:

Is it intolerably cold? It depends on your point of view, and where, exactly, you are. Today was nothing out of the ordinary here in the Twin Cities. But I have to admit that if you were to the north of us–like in International Falls, where the temperature this morning was 46 degrees below zero–it is too damn cold, period.
Otherwise, it is just winter in the Upper Midwest.