dudspizza said:
I hate to inform you, but yes it is! Okay, maybe it's not Siberia. I only say that because I've never been to Siberia to compare the two.
But Minnesota is c-o-l-d in the winter solstice to us non-Minnesotans, especially those of us in the upper south in Kentucky. It can get pretty cold here (to me that means below 0), but those are usually low temps and it only lasts for a day or two. I've seen weather forecasts in Minnesota where the high temps don't get above 0 for days at a time. That, my friend, is cold.
When I picked up my plane at Blaine, I was amazed at how the light flurries that day were sticking to the ground. Blaine had about 7 inches on the ground, much of it from the flurries. Then I realized that it had not been above the freezing mark there for a couple of weeks by then, so I guess any flurries that fall would stick, and would stay there. In my area, when it flurries, it's often warm enough (even above freezing) that it just doesn't stick, and the effect is more of just a wet ground.
The plane broker I bought the plane from lives a little further north than that (Princeton, I think), and he was practically laughing at me that I didn't want to risk flying out that day in the flurries and cold. It was about 19 degrees that day for the high. He said that was balmy to him. The broker was wearing an unbuttoned coat and t-shirt and went for walks with his dog while I checked out the plane, etc. I was absolutely shivering in my 4 layers of clothes. Somehow we got out of there and down into warmer air in Illinois that day. Thank goodness for heated hangars in Minnesota.
Sorry to tell you, but Minnesota is just plain cold. It seemed like a beautiful state, though, and I loved the architecture. Some very, very friendly people, too. It was really neat to see the landscape below me as I flew my plane back to Kentucky. I'd never seen an ice-fishing cabin (our lakes here may get a thin layer of ice in winter along the shores, but not safe enough to try ice-fishing like you can on frozen-solid lakes), but I saw hundreds of those things as I flew south. That looks like it could be fun.
Anyway, besides just people trying to get away from the cold in winter, Minn.-St. Paul is a huge city that deserves more choices than what MSP has to offer. Any other city that size, and you're bound to find at least one or two relatively inexpensive fares. A flight from Lexington, Louisville or Nashville to MSP should not have cost anywhere near what I had to pay for it. It's about the same distance to me as Orlando, but I can fly to Orlando for a third or less than what I had to pay to get to MSP.
