He had to be here.

The friend from Florida who was visiting.

People from Florida don’t visit Minnesota in January unless they have to.

He said, “Just think, last week, at this time, I was wearing a T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops.”

I told him that he was welcome to wear the same outfit here. No one would care if he turned as blue as the pink flamingoes on my lawn.

It was snowing heavily and blowing to the point that visibility was almost zero when he had arrived via airplane to our fair state. He picked up a rental car and began to drive south. The weather worsened and he began to wonder how he was going to make it to where he needed to be. He pulled his car over. He listened to the weather reports on the radio and called family members to ask them for advice. His loved ones told him that it was all downhill from the airport and that if he was any kind of a driver, he’d have no problem whatsoever making it to his destination. They treated him as if he was a Minnesota driver. He wasn’t. He was a Floridian driver in Minnesota. He sat in his unfamiliar car and tried to get his bad weather driving thoughts together.

He remembered his father’s advice that if he was caught in a blizzard, he should wait for a snowplow to come by and then follow it. That way he would not get stuck in a snowdrift. This gave him hope. Feeling much better, he kept an eye out for a snowplow. Before long, one went by. It was headed the right direction, so he began to follow it.

As he followed the snowplow, a calmness enveloped him. He was not having a bit of problem navigating through the blizzard conditions. The snowplow made a good number of turns, but it always headed back in a southerly direction.

After an hour had passed, he was surprised when the snowplow stopped. He stopped his rental car. The driver got out of the snowplow, walked back to my friend’s car and signaled him to roll down his car window.

The snowplow driver wanted to know if my friend was all right, as he had been following the snowplow for a long time.

The Floridian explained that he was fine and told the snowplow driver of his father’s advice to follow a snowplow when caught in a blizzard. He hoped aloud that the driver didn’t mind being followed.

The driver replied that it was OK with him and he could continue to trail along if he wanted, but that he was done cleaning the Fleet Farm parking lot and was going over to Target’s next.

Minnesota is a wonderful place, but it can be the land of the chattering teeth. A place where you can never own too many ice scrapers. Here in the Gopher State, shivery is not dead. Numb’s the word. We have blizzards.

What is a blizzard? A blizzard is a very heavy snowstorm with high winds. Not every heavy snowstorm with high winds can be a blizzard. There’s a test. To qualify as a blizzard, a snowstorm must have winds blowing at a minimum speed of 35 miles per hour and a visibility of less than one-quarter mile for three hours. It’s a blizzard when drivers are forced to drive the speed limit.

A blizzard is a time when we appreciate any hot air our politicians provide. A blizzard is a time when a driver from Florida suspects that Minnesota’s calendar is frozen because his nose hairs are.

Minnesotans inhabit the cold. Some people climb Mount Everest for kicks. Others sail around the world for thrills. For excitement, some Minnesotans spend winters in Minnesota.

Winter brings snow, cold, winds, ice, snowplows and endless comparisons of a current winter with those of the past. The wind makes the snow the state’s most traveled resident. “There goes the snow! Here comes the snow!”

The ice makes it possible to go skating without the need to invest in skates. Dress shoes work remarkably well as pseudo-skates.

Minnesotans make do. We watch The Weather Channel intently as we sit around building fat reserves. TWC has lots of statistics, charts, radar and people standing outside in atrocious weather for no apparent reason. It’s entertainment.

Minnesotans realize that the power might go out. We develop a hobby that doesn’t require electricity — one like napping.

We put a survival kit in the automobile — snacks, candles, a blanket, extra gloves, an ugly hat and a will.

We know by experience that temperatures will rally late on rumors of a warm spring.

Blizzards are bad.

But they could always be worse.

Hartland resident Al Batt’s columns appear every Wednesday and Sunday.