We used to have so many car bombs exploding around here that the practice even got a nickname. The Youngstown Tune-up.

Of course, Winter doesn't actually officially begin until Dec 22, which is also the shortest day of the year. I've never understood that - we've turned the corner, days are getting longer - shouldn't that be at mid-winter, not the cusp? However, the coldest days are way off still - February is usually brutal, even here in the mid-atlantic. I sometimes envy you Minnepeople your really authentic snowy winters (for about two seconds)

Speaking of which, does anyone remember the Merle Haggard song, "If we can make it through December", in which the singer appears to believe the end of December marks the end of winter? Clearly written by someone living in Southern California.

It's 30 freakin' degrees in Austin right now ... and it was 85 on Sunday! Since I moved here 10 years ago, I've maintained that winter in Texas is worse than in Minnesota. Up North, it gets chilly, then cold, then bitter. (Arctic, Absolute Zero, and Speculum, respectively, for long-time Lileks fans.) Your body adapts. Here ... what the heck. You can boil one day and freeze the next. You never get used to anything. Well, except the crushing heat in summer.

I admit that when I get to belly-aching about cruel Texas winters, I remember February in MN ... a hideous month. Only March is worse, because every morning you wake with the hope that Spring might arrive THAT DAY.

It doesn't get "nasty" down here until February, and even then it's like 20 one day and 80 the next.

Can't wait to get back to where things stay.. cold, cold, cold.

Check out this: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=bfeddc8e-90d7-4f54-9ca7-1f56fadc7c2b&p=1

shouldn't that be at mid-winter, not the cusp?

If winter is about temperature, it's right. The temperature keeps falling as long as the solar heat coming in is less than the stored heat being radiated away. So the hottest part of a summer day is at 3pm not noon, and the coldest part of winter is sometime in late January, not December 22; sometime in late January is when the solar heat picks up enough, and the radiated heat falls off enough, so that they match, and heat begins to raise the temperature again.

Winter in Seattle means watching your neighbor's house float away when we get 6 inches of rain in a single day. That, and trying to find a way to work when most of the roads are washed away or under water.

Yechh.