Cold vs. Not So Cold
By Mitch Berg
Sisyphus, from City-Pages (R)-endorsed Nihilist in Golf Pants, notes:
Whenever the mercury dips below zero here in Minnesota, two things are certain:
1. Minnesotans will whine about the cold
2. Mitch Berg, of Jamestown North Dakota, will mock said Minnesotans for being weather wimps on his blog and radio show
Dang skippy.
Now, Sisyphus trumps up some bogus “evidence” of his claim that southern Minnesota is warmer than North Dakota; cooking the case with all the grace of the Broward-County Democratic Party, he takes temperatures from Saint Cloud (which, given that city’s inferiority complex, are probably cooked to begin with), and ignores wind-chill (note to Minnesota conservatives, or City-Pages-endorsed “conservatives”: pull your collective head out of Joe Soucheray’s butt. Wind chill is cold, if it’s real wind and not these dulcid little south Minnesota breezes you’re talking about).
So let’s settle this the right way.
If you are a North Dakota native transplated to the Twin Cities: Compare and contrast. Where did you genuinely feel colder, there or here?
If you’re a Twin Citian or Southern Minnesotan transplanted to NoDak: Ditto.
I’m talking southern Minnesota, here, not Embarass or Hinkley or International Falls.
Sound off. What’s colder?
February 7th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
Can’t speak to the comparison, I’m from Michigan. But it’s interesting that “conservative” blog Nihilist in Golf Pants spends so much time ragging on fellow conservatives. First JB, now Sisyphus are up in your grill.
Ever since they won that City Pages award, their allegiances seem kind of uncertain.
February 7th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Did anyone else notice that JB, Fuzzy Nieztche and Misanthropic Frat Boy no longer appear on the NIGP’s contributors list?
Curious.
Developing…
February 7th, 2007 at 4:30 pm
I’m a NoDakian transplant. (From Minot, even farther north than those softies in Jamestown.)
And yes, one of the things I noticed straight away about the winters here is that they weren’t as cold as in NoDak. And a big reason they weren’t as cold was it’s not as windy.
The wind just sucks the life out of you in the winter. And up there on the prairie, with nothing to stop it, the wind gets a good head of steam coming down east of the Canadian Rockies and just has its way with the huddled masses in NoDak.
February 7th, 2007 at 5:46 pm
I live in (southern) Wisconsin, and have relatives all over the Northeast and the South.
Lately, the Bostonian branch of the family has been bitching about temperatures of (get this) 17 degrees. “With wind chills of ZERO!”
I tell them that the temperature here has not risen above zero for a week–and I don’t think they even believe me.
Yeah, Mitch, I know I don’t qualify as a NoDak–but I can tell you that I once drove into a raging snowstorm near Minot… in OCTOBER.
That got my respect.
February 7th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Oh yeah, another sign that winters aren’t as bad here.
In NoDak, block heaters are must-haves on vehicles. The electrical plugs coming out the front of cars were a common sight. I heard Southerners stationed at Minot Air Force Base say that when they first got there, they thought everybody had electric cars.
My first IT job was in a hospital, and the parking ramp had electrical outlets along the walls so employees could plug in their cars.
I don’t specifically recall ever seeing a block heater cord on native vehicles down here.
February 7th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
You guys are all arguing over who’s Top Idiot. You know that don’t you? Some Greenpeace hippy camping out bare-ass naked on a Greenland ice sheet stops by and you’ll all have to admit he’s even more of a nut than you are.
February 7th, 2007 at 6:42 pm
Or more of a nut than you are, at any rate, Oh Esteemed Clownness.
February 7th, 2007 at 8:57 pm
Jeff, your comment about the Southerners at the air base brought back a memory. In ’75 I was out in New York, Long Island, to be precise, at Christmas for my goddaughter’s baptism. My cousin’s neighbors came up to the door asking if they could take a look under the hood of my electric car. They made the same error when they saw the block heater plug. As far as North Dakota wind and cold are concerned, my grandfather started his home mission ministry for the old Lutheran Free Church at Kenmare. He homesteaded southwest of the town and his father provided a Sears Roebuck pre-fab house. It was erected right on the top of a hill. I heard a lot about wind and cold when I was growing up.
February 7th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
Ha! I went out this morning without a coat to start my (plugged in!) car. That wasn’t so bad so I thought I might as well put some sunflower seeds out for the birds…it was 30 degrees below 0. Very brisk.
When I left work at noon, it had climbed to -8 but the wind was blowing hard so it was much worse than -30. That’s why NoDak is colder. My daughter & family live in Harvey, ND and we tease them about the wind and the one tree…
February 7th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Lemme guess, Colleen. You’re in…. Winnipeg?
February 7th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
Let me get this straight. It’s wussie to complain about cold temperatures, but perfectly reasonable to whine about a little wind.
I grew up in the third windiest city in the continental United States, Rochester, MN (http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/archive-windy-city.htm) so unless you’re from Dodge City, Kansas or Amarillo, Texas, I don’t want to hear about wind from you.
February 7th, 2007 at 10:06 pm
Colleen, what’s the name of your daughter and family? My aunt and uncle live in Harvey. (Glenn and Joan Frey.)
mefolkes, that’s funny. (And I went hunting in the Kenmare area quite a few times.)
February 7th, 2007 at 11:16 pm
Jeff: That’s pretty neat. They are Todd & Krysten McKinven. I’ll have to ask her about the Freys…ithe name sounds kinda familiar to me. Until she met him while going to school in Fargo, we had no idea such a place existed…the “interior” of ND was a vague area on the map! We knew Grand Forks and Fargo. I crossed ND my whole life going back and forth from Colorado to Minnesota as a kid, but that was always on I-94. There’s a whole lot more to ND than Fargo & Grand Forks and it’s all beautiful…..and full of sky.
Alois…nope…Warroad, MN.
February 8th, 2007 at 12:23 am
Colleen, I’ve got a photo from the second place my grandparents lived in North Dakota, Ambrose, even further to the northwest of Kenmare. The whole family is clustered around a sapling, and when I scanned the photo to share it with my cousins, I titled it “the Erickson family guarding the tree”. My grandfather did circuit-riding to establish around a dozen-and-a-half congregations. This was before cars were common, at least in that part of the country. He spent some nights with parishioners, but often he camped out. If the weather was clear, he slept in the bed of the buckboard. If it was raining or snowing, he slept underneath the buckboard. He carried a shotgun to provide the meat course for his meals, and baking powder and flour for bannock (fry bread). He often used his guitar to accompany music. Times have indeed changed.
February 8th, 2007 at 6:07 am
It’s wussie to complain about cold temperatures, but perfectly reasonable to whine about a little wind.
No whining involved – merely responding to a piece in a City Pages-endorsed blog that was wrong!
I grew up in the third windiest city in the continental United States, Rochester, MN
City, Schmity. Minot, Jamestown, Willliston, Dickinson and Rugby aren’t even on the list. And Rochester has much higher ambient temperatures than any of them.
I dig at Minnesotans’ wussiness for a reason. They’re wusses.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:25 am
And you are somehow NOT Minnesotan? How does that work, Immigrant?
February 8th, 2007 at 8:35 am
mefolkes: Great story about your grandfather. Didn’t people lead more interesting lives back then…and talk about hardy.
Why have people died from the “bitter cold” across the midwest? Were they homeless people? Or did they just drop dead when going to the store? My husband and his brother lived in International Falls when in early elementary school. They walked to school one morning at -56…and LIVED! (Nobody dreamed of bringing their kids to school back then-usually the dad had the car at work anyway. Now the buses pick town kids up a block from school. Criminy). Monday morning Bemidji closed their schools since it was -30. Bemidji. Ridiculous.
Kermit, you are where you’re from forever. I grew up in Colorado and although I have lived here for 33 years (far longer than I ever lived there), I’m still from Colorado. Kind of apropos to this weather-related stuff, when I was in 1st grade we lived at Climax, CO (elevation 11,360 ft). My dad was a miner (molybedenum)and the town was a purely “company town”-housing, clinic, school-everything there behind a fence-you had to check in at the “guard-shack” when entering the grounds pretty much like a military base. One morning when it had probably snowed 4 ft or so, I was almost to school when a guard drove up and informed me that school was cancelled due to the snow. Even at 6 I wondered how come I could make it there but the teachers couldn’t!
February 8th, 2007 at 8:58 am
Colleen, at the request of my cousins (more like threats of tar-and-feathers), I have been writing up stories from our oral tradition. They have taken on a life of their own, and they will be published at some point. If you, or Mitch, would enjoy reading some of them, especially the ones relating to the immigration from Norway and the first decades of settlement, I’d be happy to share them. We just need a private mode of transmission. The grandfather I already mentioned was the saintly one, born in Minnesota of immigrant parents. My other grandfather was born in Norway, and was definitely a different sort. He was the Will Rogers of booze. He never met a bottle he didn’t like. Although he was born in Norway, he had a lot of Scotch and Irish in him. Scotch malt and Irish rye whiskey, that is.
February 8th, 2007 at 10:13 am
mefolkes: I would love to read those stories. How I wish someone in our family would write up some of the same…I had a German immigrant grandpa (the most wonderful man God made) the rest of my background is Norwegian with a whole GOB of Scotch-Irish from N Ireland. My husband had Norwegian immigrant grandparents (his grandma came alone at age 16-we would love to know the back-story on that, but no one ever talked back then…it’s amazing). We can all relate to the boozer relatives-Norwegians and Irish are both very talented in that regard!
Have you read “Boat of Longing” by O E Rolvaag?
Anyway, Mitch is probably going to be irked that this thread has turned into this, but it”s been fun discussing something other than snarky politics. I really do want to read those stories-can they be sent via email or would you need a physical address?
February 8th, 2007 at 11:18 am
Having lived for most of my life in Minnesota and also having spent my college years in Grand Forks, I can say without hesitation that winters in North Dakota (at least in Grand Forks maybe not the tropical Jamestown) are much tougher to take. As a previous commenter said, after a while the wind sucks the life right out of you. There were days when you took your life into your hands walking from one end of campus to the other. One year, the governor of No Dak actually shut down every school in the state because of cold and wind chills. It was either ’89 or ’90. The temps in GF were -30 to -40 and wind chills approaching -90. I lived off campus at the time and I don’t think me or any of my roommates went to class all week. We were able to walk eight blocks to the liquor store, but it was hell. Necessities of life of course.
February 8th, 2007 at 11:33 am
Colleen, the stories are in Word format and I’ve e-mailed them all over. So, how do we exchange addresses without a troll intercepting?
Mitch, you have my apologies if I’ve taken the thread in the wrong direction.
February 8th, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Grand Forks maybe not the tropical Jamestown
No argument. I’ve never been colder than I was in Forx, either. Jamestown’s in a valley, so there were trees and the wind didn’t get you QUITE as bad (unless you ventured up on the hill), although snow from three states and two provinces coagulated there, so you got the worst of both worlds.
But Grand Forks sits right on one of the flattest places on earth, with nothing but your walls to stop the wind. And it is BRRRRRUTALly cold up there.
February 8th, 2007 at 12:53 pm
I think NoDak just seems colder. We can trade anecdotal evidence on frostbite all day long. But imagine it being below zero AND you’re hundreds of miles from a record store that stocks the more obscure work of Stiff Little Fingers, an Ethiopian restaurant with decent Muimo fritters, or a movie theater whose managment has even heard of Wim Wenders. Talk about frigid isolation! From my reading of the Flickertail diaspora, that’s the climate change you were fleeing.
February 8th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
But imagine it being below zero AND…
Imagine it? I lived it!
I suspect most of us who moved here from there wanted to be where there was more going on, more opportunity (for something other than school teachers and diesel mechanics), and other people who wanted the same. Someplace where you could have a reasonable expectation that your life in twenty years might be different than your life now.
February 8th, 2007 at 1:09 pm
Bah. MN? ND? You haven’t really lived until you’ve been in Butte, MT for a winter or two. Love that town, even with the cold. I remember it snowing there on the 4th of July once – now, that’s a place that knows winter.
On a side note, a few years back the missus and I drove westward through ND in December, after midnight. It was so cold and the wind was so bad that we had to keep turning the hot air back and forth from us to the windshield as the stupid thing kept frosting up. I will give ND winter it’s props … but MN, in my 15 years here, hasn’t impressed.
February 8th, 2007 at 1:32 pm
mefolkes: Hmmmm…I don’t know quite what to do either. I’m tempted to say to heck with it and put my email address down…but then again…there’s a couple people (well, one) that posts on this blog that makes me veeery nervous. I’m almost positive nothing bad would come of publishing my email address, yet I hesitate…! “He” or “it” has probably lost interest in the weather thread anyway…
Mitch, do you have our addresses from when we had to login? Can you give a little nudge in the right direction?
February 8th, 2007 at 1:33 pm
My family (who lives in Chicago) has long said that they would never come up here in the winter because it is “soooooo cold”. I remind them that they get the same sub-zero cold and wind – just usually a couple of days after we do and that once it gets below zero it’s all just “DAMM COLD!”
LL
February 8th, 2007 at 2:24 pm
Afraid Angryclown will have pizzas sent to your house, Colleen?
February 8th, 2007 at 3:15 pm
I used to live in North Pole, Alaska (no, really)
We had a two week period where the high temperature never got above -40 below. Plus there was only about an hour or so of what could barely be called sunlight.
But the thing is, the colder it got, the less wind there was, and it was bone dry. I’d rather have that kind of weather than -10 below with a lot of wind.
February 8th, 2007 at 3:40 pm
North Pole Alaska, eh? I think that makes you King of the Idiots, master of none! Unless we’ve got someone who voluntarily bathes in liquid nitrogen or froze his d**k to a flagpole on a dare.
February 8th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
Colleen, apparently Mitch isn’t helping. I’ll volunteer mine. I hope that you’re not worried about Clown. A lawyer would know better than to misuse an e-mail address. Just add @charter.net to my screen name. He can send pizzas to my house instead.
February 8th, 2007 at 4:33 pm
Mitch makes that “lawyer” stuff up, mefolkes. Actually, Angryclown fakes traffic accidents and collects the insurance. It’s a living.
February 8th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
mefolkes and colleen – sorry, I missed the request in there until just now.
Let me know if I can still help.
February 8th, 2007 at 6:13 pm
Clown, thank you for clarifying things. My opinion of you just went up several notches.
Mitch, Colleen made contact with me. I’d be happy to share them with you, as well, since we share a common heritage. The stories are short, crafted for kids.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
It’s a living.
Clown is too modest. He makes $275,000 a year. He can afford a fourth-floor cold-water walkup efficiency in Bed-Stuy.
February 8th, 2007 at 7:34 pm
Hell, with that kind of salary, His Clownness could live on the street in Seattle…
February 8th, 2007 at 10:05 pm
I think that makes you King of the Idiots
No, I’m not your sovereign, AC. I’m just the Master of None.
February 9th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Really? I heard you’re something like the king of fly fishermen up there in Minnesota, master.
February 9th, 2007 at 12:34 pm
Clown,
I’ve been tempted to fly out your way and try New York-style fly-fishing.
Hook a cockroach, toss it into the toxic miasma of the East River, and see who can get the biggest rat on the line.
February 9th, 2007 at 1:14 pm
I thought the Clown’s version of fly fishing involved zippers.
February 9th, 2007 at 2:11 pm
Wrong thread. The urinal post is farther up.
February 12th, 2007 at 5:30 am
Oh wait, Angryclown remembers. Angryclown had heard you’re a master baiter.
Thankyew.