“Cold enough for you?”

That’s the question Minnesotans greet each other with. It’s a rhetorical question but one we start using when the temperature dips below freezing for the first time in the fall. Come summer in August we’ll ask if it’s hot enough too but we don’t use that phrase for very long.

It’s cold here in Minnesota. As I type this it’s -6°. It’s sunny and the air is crisp. So crisp it actually hurts your lungs when you breathe it in too quickly.

– 6° isn’t that cold though you’d never know that from watching any of the national news programs. I watched a nationally aired news show from New York the other day and the reporter was interviewing people on the street. He talked to families from the NY, TX and TN. All of them mentioned wearing multiple layers and complained of cold toes and noses. The temperature was 15° above zero.

At 15° above zero Minnesotans might zip up their coat. If you visit the University of Minnesota you will see many students wearing shorts.

It’s going to get colder. Much colder. And, the wind is going to kick in. The Governor has closed the schools on Monday throughout the state because temps aren’t expected to rise above -20° and wind chills could be around -50°.

When it’s this cold if you breathe in too quickly your boogers will freeze together and effectively shut off your nose breathing abilities. When it’s this cold the snow is like corn starch and sounds almost as bad as fingernails on chalkboard when you walk on it.  But when it’s this cold you can also do a lot of fun things. You can actually hammer a nail in with a frozen banana.

But mostly you look for things to do indoors because odds are the car isn’t going to start.

We’ve been hearing about the frigid air coming from Canada for a few days now. You can’t escape talk of it on the news, radio or anywhere on the web. Facebook is filled with nothing but status updates about how cold it is. We’ve been anticipating this cold snap for a while and yet there has been no run on the grocery story (though possibly the liquor store) and people aren’t panicking.

We’ve been cold before and any Minnesotan worth their Sorels knows that it gets cold like this every winter.  We’ll ride it out like we do all natural events by watching TV and feasting on hotdish.