Glad to be in Minnesota?

When I first moved to Minnesota from Georgia, I figured God had a great sense of humor. I had moved from Cortland, New York to Ocala, Florida in 2000 and thought "This is great! No more snow, no more shoveling snow, no more winter boots & coats & mittens! Life is good!" Well, the joke was on me when, four years later (and a short stint in Georgia) we ended up in Minnesota. NOT on my list of places to move to, that's for sure! Now, after living here four years, I've decided that Minnesota isn't so bad after all.

As I look around the country - and the world - and see all the weather-related events causing so much destruction, suffering, and loss of life, winter blizzards don't, for the most part, seem that bad. We don't (usually) have mud-slides, earthquakes, or deadly fires (the worst in Minnesota history having been the 1918 Cloquet Fire). We have had deadly tornadoes (1998 Tornado & Dericho) and flooding (2007 Flooding); however, they are very few and far between. Hurricanes have never caused our state to evacuate to Canada; although their remnants sometimes cause the tornadoes and flooding that hit our state!

Now that I've mentioned all the instances that our great state of Minnesota hasn't had to contend with, I knock on wood & cross my fingers...