Claire Shefchik

Listen up, you East Coasters with your Polar Vortexes and #snowmageddons, you have a thing or two to learn about winter. When it comes to frigid winters, Minnesota takes the cake. When temperatures drop below 20 degrees, New Yorkers freak out like it's the end of the world. Minnesotans, on the other hand, consider it balmy.  Here are 13 things that only Minnesotans understand about winter. 1. When snow covers the ground and cars are skidding all over the road, we don't have to come up with some snazzy name for it like "Blizzard 2016," "Snowpocalypse" or "Snowmaggedon." We call it winter. We trudge through it wearing Stormy Cromer caps and Darn Tuff socks. Winter is not a news event, a phenomenon, or a thing. It is life for five—yes, five—months out of the year. 2. Imagine the longest winter you ever experienced as a child, then add three months. That’s winter in Minnesota. 3. Not sure you have any interest in watching people crazy people on skates hurtle down 12-story vertical drops at 80 mph? Neither were we until 2010. Nobody actually knows what Crashed Ice is—all we know is that it's been in St Paul since 2010, and if it ever goes away we'll miss it. 4. Temperature just hit 40 degrees? Everywhere else, people are huddled in Gore-Tex jackets with their hands shoved into their pockets. In Minnesota, we’re out in jogging shorts and T-shirts with earbuds stuffed in our ears. 5. Drive to go cross country skiing? Never. There’s a perfectly good ski trail right where you are. It’