Born and reared in Boston ... never knew this kind of cold there ... lot of snow, and somewhere around the 60's or 70's it turned to a lot of slush, but never sub cold temps.
Honestly, it was standard January in Buffalo. And we went to school in it, unless it had lots of snow with it.
The Gore-crowd is milking this for all it’s worth. My husb grew up in Minnesota and they had 40 to 50 below for weeks in winter.
We lived in VT in the early seventies and sub zero was common.