for those of us who have lived in Minnesota most of our lives getting ready is fairly routine.shut off the outside water and turn over the bird baths,run the snow blower before it snows which i've done.i have a couple buckets of a sand-salt mix that the city gives away.the winter clothes and boots are on the side of the rack in the colsit and just have to be moved to the front.
a new very large dry bag from a yard sale with a old heavy jacket,boots,blanket,gloves and wool hat will go into the trunk of my older car.the big chore will be to get my canoes onto the racks and get the tarps and wood roof over them.over the years i have thought about a small generator to run the gas furnace if we had a major power outage or putting a pipe inside the unused brick chimney so i could hook up a wood stove in the basement to heat things up a bit until the power came back on.we have enough food set aside so we could skip trips to the local store if the city streets went unplowed but Minneapolis does a great job at keeping them clear.all in all it's just another winter.

HOWEVER!!!!

last year the cold snap came on so fast that i did not have a chance to drain the water barrel and had to chop out the ice!!1