Q. This is a Minnesota question. I heard a term from someone on one of my writing groups that lives near Minneapolis and am curious if you have ever heard it before in reference to below freezing weather. "Spit-popping cold" meaning that if you spit when it was near or below zero your spit would freeze or pop before it had a chance to hit the ground. Curious minds need to know.
A. I've never heard that one! Your explanation makes some sense, but the spit would have to be a VERY small drop and it would have to be VERY cold. Spit would be body temperature and unless the person was standing on top of a hill and spitting over the edge, it would only be five feet or so to the ground. On a normal winter day, say fifteen to twenty below zero, a drop of body temperature liquid would make a little hole when it landed in the snow and travel down through the snow until it froze.
In my family, we used to say, "sleeve-cracking weather" when it was way below zero. That was because my aunt in California sent me a new jacket for Christmas. The jacket looked like leather, but it was made from plastic. I put it on to walk to school on the first day after Christmas vacation. It was cold that morning, about twenty below. I was just about to go into the school, when one of my friends yelled a greeting. I turned, raised my arm to wave at her, and my sleeve cracked at the shoulder and fell off!
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