Extreme cold hits Midwest, just like every year

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

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A Wisconsin woman walks through a blizzard in subzero temperatures, in a photograph that could have been taken this year, last year, or any year since the beginning of time.

Extreme cold hits Midwest, just like every year

by John Johnson, staff reporter

KENOSHA, WI—With temperatures plummeting well below zero this week in Wisconsin and much of the Midwest, just as they have every single January in the northern hemisphere, like clockwork, for as long as anyone can remember, media outlets across the country are unleashing nonstop coverage on what amounts to seasonal variations in temperature that mankind has been experiencing since the dawn of humanity.

For some reason, Americans were startled to wake up to the news that temperatures in the Midwest had become especially frigid. Indeed, newspapers nationwide plastered the story all over their front pages as if it were news, or as if there were actually people that would find the situation unusual, interesting, or in some way newsworthy.

Even Jeff Garrow, a reporter at CNN, admits to reusing previous years’ weather articles when he is busy covering other stories. “Let’s see…40 below…arctic blast…blowing snow…moving toward New England…eyewitness accounts…it’s all here,” he said, as he perused last year’s article and prepared to post it on CNN.com as a current event. “The funny thing is no one will ever know the difference.”

Even more bizarre than the incessant media coverage, analysts say, is that the story has created quite a buzz, as it has year in and year out, among residents in cities as remote and climatically opposite as Tampa, Florida, inciting discussions about the weather patterns that may have caused the cold.

Although meteorologists have attributed this year’s cold snap to arctic air masses moving in from the north, others have traced its origin to the season of winter, which results from the earth’s tilt away from the sun, a phenomenon that has been present for the entire 4 billion years that Earth has existed.

As predicted, interviews with residents of the affected Midwestern states revealed no sentiments of surprise or disbelief. “It’s actually quite nice,” said Tom Jackson, a longtime Kenosha resident. “As long as you got some layers on, it only feels a little chilly. I guess that’s what you get for living here anyway,” he continued, almost as if he were expecting such temperatures in the dead of winter in a state that sits almost entirely above the 43rd parallel.

Ken Layton, a Los Angeles, California, resident, seemed completely caught off guard by the news when he read about it yesterday morning. “Oklahoma I can see,” he said. “But Wisconsin? I would not have expected to hear that Wisconsin got a cold snap. I thought it was warm in Wisconsin. I was picturing palm trees and cherry blossoms and stuff. Sorta like L.A.”

When informed that Wisconsin is actually known for its blistering cold weather, Layton, 33, who admits he “doesn’t get out much,” also confessed that he only recently learned the earth was, in fact, round.

© 2009 The Teaspoon Times

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