Cold nuff fer ya?

I am still in Kane, which means it was 1 degree right before lunch today. Tomorrow it is supposed to warm up to 24 degrees, which means i might be able to trick Myles into going sledding again.
I grew up in Kane, so temperatures hovering around zero aren't a surprise in January. Not too long ago, there was a drive to have Kane officially named the Icebox of Pennsylvania. When small towns (and cities in decline like Flint) want to drum up community pride when it cannot be generated organically, they seize on a characterisitc of the town that is actually pretty crummy to begin with. Bragging rights would follow, if you could call it that.
So we competed witth nearby Bradford for the coldest temperatures in the state. We would usually win, though the claims were disputed as if it mattered. Then at one point when I was in high school we learned that Kane could never hold that title because either (this is where memory fails me) we lost our official weather recording station or we never had one and the champion Icebox would need one. Bradford with its airport would always have one, so the official campaign dies. But the competition still continues. People from Kane will still claim the Icebox title when talking weather to other folks in the state. My dad, a Weather Watcher for WJET in Erie, will check the Bradford temperature on the weather channel before he checks the one in the yard to make sure his reading is right.
Being proud of the cold is not just a weird Kane thing. These folks in Minnesota were disappointed that their high temperature reached -54, not because they were hoping for habitable weather, but rather they wanted the Minnesotan record for coldest high temperature.