Another pretty but cold day.  And a cold night in store for a lot of people. We had another 6.5 inches of snow when I measured this morning, and we got a few more inches during the day today. I'm thinking this is enough. At least we're looking at a warmup after this latest cold snap gets out of here. 
     On my CoCoRaHS site people were asked yesterday what the coldest temperature was that they could remember. People from all across the country responded and there were some really interesting responses. I read through a few of them and began thinking about some of the cold spells we've been through here. I remember the long stretches of below-zero weather more than just the low numbers. It seems to me we've had a lot of times that has happened. I also remember so many times that cars wouldn't start on cold mornings. You don't seem to hear about that as much any more. When I first started driving, there were headbolt heaters that we plugged in and that kept the engine block warm. Worked like a charm. I remember there were covers that fit over the grill on the front of cars to help keep the cold off the engine, otherwise, your heater simply blew cold air. They had some kind of buttons down  the front - might have been magnets - that you could undo to let more air in when the weather warmed up, I suppose - engines overheating were a problem, too. If you didn't have one of those, cardboard inside the grill next to the radiator helped, too. There was antifreeze, but that didn't always work. As I recall, it had to be mixed with the water in the radiator and if the proportion wasn't quite right, the system would freeze.
    Another cold-weather thing we always did was let the car "warm up" by idling for a few minutes before taking off. Now mechanics tell you that is not only unnecessary, it's bad for the car - as well as the environment! That's only on newer cars, I guess, but it's still nicer to get into a car that's been running for a few minutes with the heater going full blast! And I really  like heated seats and steering wheels. And the heaters in today's cars really work! I remember when it was hard to find a car that had a really good heater in it. Some models were notorious for having heaters that were really ineffective - not even as good as the heated stones the really old cars had! But you could buy some kind of auxiliary heater that would fit in some cars.  Only they sometimes started fires, as I recall. Now you can buy auxiliary heaters that plug into the cigarette lighter.
     We've come a long way, but I imagine this weather being way below zero is still going to boggle some cars. The best we can do is try to keep ourselves and our cars as warm as possible until this vortex thing is out of here and spring weather moves in. It's going to happen - I'm betting this will be the last deep "cold snap" we have to endure this winter. I don't have any money riding on it - I'm not that dopey! - I'm just saying.