Serving the Flathead Valley & Montana since 2006. A reality based independent journal of observation & analysis. © James Conner.
I grew up in northern Minnesota, where winter temperatures often dropped to minus 30°F, minus 40°F, and lower. I still remember a night in February that was minus 48°F when Nancy finished a performance at a coffeehouse, and we were more than a little worried that the cold might crack her guitar before we got it home. The guitar survived intact.
I don’t miss weather that cold. It was inconvenient — cars barely started, frozen tires thumped and bumped, and fuel oil bills were sky high — but it wasn’t dangerous for the prepared. When cold weather was forecast, we pulled on an extra sweater, plugged-in the car, and stayed warm.
We never trembled in fear that a polar vortex would swoop down from the north pole, freeze drying everything in its path, threatening the very existence of civilization.
But today’s weather wussies do. Here’s a paragraph from a Huffington Post story alerting Americans to a cold snap:
The temperature predictions are startling: 25 below zero in Fargo, N.D., minus 31 in International Falls, Minn., and 15 below in Indianapolis and Chicago. At those temperatures, exposed skin can get frostbitten in minutes and hypothermia can quickly set in because wind chills could hit 50, 60 or even 70 below zero.
Come on. Those are global warming temperatures to those of us who experienced minus 48°F in our youth. They’re startling only to the weather wussies below the Mason-Dixon line, the sun-baked and half-baked who define a cold snap as temperatures below 60°F, and who lunge for the Southern Comfort, the grog serving as human anti-freeze in the land of cotton (and cottonmouths), at the first hint they might have to use their air conditioners as heat pumps.
Get a grip. When the weatherman forecasts cold, don’t throw up your hands in despair — just stay cool, throw another log on the fire, and enjoy a hot buttered rum.