Iowa cold

It's been a cold start to 2010 for my friends back in Iowa. Thanks to a handy weather application on the IPhone I routinely check weather around the world.

Anchorage, Alaska,

Moscow,

Minsk...

... have all been warmer than Cedar Rapids for the past week. Temperatures have been below zero 9 out of the first 10 days of 2010.

Even for Iowa, that's a long cold spell. How cold has it been? Temps in Cedar Rapids have been matching Novosibirsk. Never heard of the place? It's the capitol of Siberia.

I suggest doing what I did living here last summer: Look up the places that have it worse than you. In this case my fellow Iowans would have to look to Barrow, Alaska. One of my friends from grad school is the DA in Barrow. Since Barrow is within the Artic circle they go weeks without daylight and in the summer there's daylight 24 hours/day. In the long dark freeze it is currently -37. The warmest temperature they expect in the next week is -16.