Have Midwesterners Become Winter Wimps?

I was attending college in Minnesota when I celebrated my 20th birthday.  The same day (Feb. 2, 1996) the North Star State recorded its coldest temperature ever, 60 degrees below zero.

You betcha I know the sensation of your nostrils freezing together when you step outside, the frustration of trying to get your car to start in the extreme cold and what it's like to have your furnace go out in the dead of winter.

But to all of my friends in the Twin Cities, Chicago and elsewhere in the Midwest, enough about the polar vortex already.

Yeah, it's cold. I get it.  But doing a TV live shot about the cold while you're inside a car and posting things like "OMG it's painful outside!" on your Facebook pages (what feels like every five minutes) makes you look like winter wimps.

What gives me, a true Wyomingite, the right to call you out?  Well, nothing really, except the fact that your record lows don't beat the Cowboy State, which dropped to minus 66 degrees Fahrenheit on Feb. 9, 1933.

In fact, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the only states that have recorded colder temperatures than Wyoming are Alaska and Montana.

So pardon me pardners if I think you need to cowboy up, put on your insulated coveralls and stop whining.

As Minnesotans say, "It could always be worse."

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