Why is this news???

FOXNews.com - Mercury in Minnesota Town Plummets to Record Low:

"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 Canadian border. 'People just don't go out, unless you have to go to work.'
Like many Minnesota residents, he uses an electric engine block
heater to keep his car 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 for Feb. 11 in International Falls was 37 below, set in 1967, 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 1888, the weather service said."

And did schools close because of the cold?? NOOOOO....still had to get the kids off.

Why does it surprise people that it gets so cold here? Funny thing is you don't hear a lot of national news concerning MN and if you do it is either "too cold" or "too many tornadoes"....or about Wellstone/Humphrey (like we don't have any other celebs from here).

Its almost as annoying as having visitors come up during the summer and complain about how humid it gets. Yes we get humid....it can be 65F and muggy and you will feel like its 96F if you aren't used to it. And yes we do break the 100F mark at least 3 days a year {I'll warn you now, it happens in July/Aug}....and yes it does get "hot enough" for us.

Oh....and International Falls is a "city" not a "town"....a city is 'incorporated' and provides local services to residents---a town generally does not provide services, they are provided by the county. Also there are no more official 'villages' in Mn...we live in what was the last village...it became an official city in the 1990's {I want to say 1992} and boy did the property taxes jump!