Weather obsession is mandatory here, it's a state law (I think). Anything more (less?) than ten below, and all the old-timers come into the Post Office and say "what did you have last night?" and they don't mean for supper. Only they say it like "jew hev last night?"

The way you reply reveals whether or not you are really "from around here". If you are one of us, you kind of shrug and nonchalantly say "Seventeen, out back." You can't use the word "below" because that's a given and makes you sound like "summer people", "flatlanders", or "city folk".

If you have a digital thermometer, round it off to the next lower degree. If you say "16.8" people will smirk at you behind your back. If it's 16.8, you say "Seventeen". If it's between 16.5 and 16.8 you say "about seventeen."

And you can't just give the number, you have to qualify it somehow, by following it with "out at the barn", "when I got up", or "last I looked". That's so people don't think you're trying to set yourself up as official or anything.

Finally, if you have the lowest, you always throw the rest a bone, so to speak, so no one thinks you're stretching it or trying to one-up everybody else (which, of course, you are). You pause a couple of seconds and say, "'Course, we're across the river."

Weather obsession is practically an art. Tomorrow I'll give you lessons on reporting snow accumulation and moose spotting.