Iowa Winters Rank WHERE Out Of All The States?

It's no secret: Winter in the Midwest can suuuuck. They're long, gloomy, and often dangerous. This weeks weather is case and point. As I write this, we have a pending Winter Storm Warning looming.

So that said, out of 50 great American states, where do Iowa winters rank? Top 5 right? Top 10...? Nope. According to Thrillist...

We're NUMBER 11

Ranking at number 1, our neighbors to the frozen North, Minnesota. Michigan slides in at number 2. Those are hard to argue. Alaska ranks third which, again, I get. But maybe 5th or 6th? Nope and naw. That's North Dakota and Main respectively. So what did Thrillist say to justify a number 11 finish?

One January, while inexplicably choosing to travel by car from Chicago to Iowa to watch an Iowa basketball game, there was a whiteout-style snowstorm en route, and a truck jack-knifed along I-80, and there was the biggest traffic jam in recent Iowa history, which we managed to avoid thanks to Google Maps all of a sudden nervously bellowing out that we needed to turn off onto some random farm road.

All of the Iowans seemed to take this in stride with a suspiciously friendly Midwest-ness, possibly because Iowa has to deal with a super confluence of shitty weather: snowstorms in the winter; 50 days of thunderstorms; an average of 47 tornadoes a year (in 2008 there were 105). I mean, jeez, even Wikipedia calls their winters “harsh.”

Yes, they called us friendly and said we take it in stride. Hm, maybe being #11 isn't so bad after all...