Dealing with the polar vortex in the Midwest that will bring record low temperatures.

Snow covers the area in Chicago. NPR/AP.

As you may know I live in the Midwest. More specifically I live in Wisconsin. It's apparently a major news story on a slow news day that it is very cold and terrible in Wisconsin and it will get worse this week. Though it is nice that the national news media is actually paying attention to us for once (and by that I mean Chicago) it isn't nice having to deal with the cold and snow. 

We had about 8-10 inches of snow today, which is a lot even for Wisconsin. But that's not the main story. Instead, people are focused on the extreme cold temperatures this week. For my area that means high temps below zero and lows around -15 to -20. It will likely be record breaking low temperature which is always a bad thing. 

Generally speaking, as someone who has dealt with Wisconsin winters for the past 35 years, I greatly prefer low temperatures to snow. As long as i don't have to go outside for extended periods of time and as long as the pipes don't freeze I am fine with cold temperatures. I just wear multiple layers, gloves and long underwear and I am fine. 

Snow is so much worse though because it makes driving horrible. If the plows come out and do their jobs it isn't too bad but if they don't or can't keep up the roads are a slippery, horrible mess. Plus there is always the problem of shoveling which is a special kind of hell depending on how wet and heavy the snow is. Thankfully, the snow we had is the last we should have for awhile. 

Generally speaking though, in Wisconsin we tend to have a couple of weeks like this a year. The actual temperatures are a little cooler than normal but not by much. Indeed, up until this point our winter was extremely mild and almost devoid of snow, which was fine by me. I knew the good times wouldn't last though. 

I do always wonder why I stay in Wisconsin though when winter is usually horrible. There are reasons though. Outside of blizzards and the occasional summer tornado (I did have the misfortune to have gone through one of these but thankfully it was an F-0, which is as week as possible) we don't have much in the way of natural disasters. We don't have to worry too much about earthquakes, hurricanes or volcanoes here and even wildfires are pretty much unheard of. 

Plus, the state is pretty nice around 8 months of the year and usually only January and February are terrible winter months (though we did have a horrible spring storm last April that ended up giving us two feet of snow). I enjoy the outdoors, like our state gun laws and love how cheap it is to live here. My money goes much farther than it would in California, for example, and I can actually spend my money on things I want. 

Still, in the short term, I am going to be pretty miserable the next few days. Though I prefer extreme cold to snow any day of the week, I still don't like either. My only real worry is that my car won't start due to the extreme cold but other than that, I sincerely hope that the next few days go fast...