Rich on the Road

I grew up in Minnesota.  I'm the only one in my clan that made it out.  The rest -- still up there.  In what is turning out to be a bitterly cold winter.  I offer the following story as exhibit #1 in the case for why I shall never live there full time again.

 MINNEAPOLIS (AP) - It lived up to its name: The temperature in International Falls fell to 40 below zero Monday, just a few days after the northern Minnesota town won a federal trademark making it officially the "Icebox of the Nation."

It was so cold that resident Nick McDougall couldn't even get his car trunk lid to close after he got out his charger to kick-start his dead battery. By late morning, the temperature had risen all the way to 18—below zero.

"This is about as cold as it gets, this is bad. There's no wind—it's just cold," said McDougall, 48, a worker at The Fisherman, a convenience store and gas station in the town on the Canadien border.  "People just don't go out, unless you have to go to work."

Residents of the area use electric engine block heaters to keep their cars from freezing.

"You plug in your car, for sure, and you put the car in the garage if you can," McDougall said. His garage is full of other things, so he had to park outside—a "big mistake."

The previous record low in International Falls was 37 below, set in said meteorologist Mike Stewart at the weather service in Duluth. The cold was expected, he said: "When the winds finally died off and the skies cleared off, it just dropped."

The temperature also fell to 40 below in Embarrass, 80 miles southeast of International Falls. That's just one degree above the all-time record in Minneapolis, 250 miles to the south, that was set in January the weather service said.

BRRRRRRR

Rich