page_title: Climate of Minnesota
section_title: Image and popular culture
hierarchical_section_title: Climate of Minnesota / Image and popular culture
context_page_description: Minnesota has a humid continental climate, with hot summers and cold winters. Minnesota's location in the Upper Midwest allows it to experience some of the widest variety of weather in the United States, with each of the four seasons having its own distinct characteristics. The area near Lake Superior in the Minnesota Arrowhead region experiences weather unique from the rest of the state. The moderating effect of Lake Superior keeps the surrounding area relatively cooler in the summer and warmer in the winter, giving that region a smaller yearly temperature range. On the Köppen climate classification, much of the southern third of Minnesota—roughly from the Twin Cities region southward—falls in the hot summer zone, and the northern two-thirds of Minnesota falls in the warm summer zone.
  Winter in Minnesota is characterized by cold temperatures. Snow is the main form of winter precipitation, but freezing rain, sleet, and occasionally rain are all possible during the winter months. Common storm systems include Alberta clippers or Panhandle hooks; some of which develop into blizzards.
context_section_description: Minnesota's climate has done much to shape the image of the state.  Minnesota has a late but intense spring, a summer of water sports, an autumn of brilliantly colored leaves, and a long winter with outdoor sports and activities.
  "Summer at the lake" is a Minnesota tradition. Water skiing was invented in Minnesota by Ralph Samuelson, and the Minneapolis Aquatennial features a milk carton boat race.  Contestants build boats from milk cartons and float them on Minneapolis area lakes, with recognition based more on colorful and imaginative designs than on actual racing performance.
  
  But while Minnesota's warm summers provide its natives and tourists with a variety of outdoor activities, the state is known for its winters. The state has produced curlers, skiers, and lugers who have competed in the Winter Olympics, pioneers who invented the snowmobile, and legions of ice fishing enthusiasts.  
   The state is also known for enthusiastic ice hockey players, both at the amateur and professional levels.  Eveleth, Minnesota, home to the United States Hockey Hall of Fame, boasts of the number of quality players and the contributions of the city (and the rest of the Mesabi Range) to the growth and development of hockey in the United States.
  To many outsiders, Minnesota's winters appear to be cold and inhospitable.  A World War II newscaster, in describing the brutally cold conditions of the Russian front, stated that at least Minnesotans could understand it.  A New York journalist visited St. Paul and declared that the city was "another Siberia, unfit for human habitation."  In response, the city decided to build a huge ice palace in 1886, similar to one that Montreal had built in 1885.  They hired the architects of the Canadian ice palace to design one for St. Paul and built a palace 106 ft (32.3 m) high with ice blocks cut from a nearby lake.  This began the tradition of the Saint Paul Winter Carnival, a ten-day festival which celebrates Minnesota's winter season.
  Minnesota's winters are the setting of several television programs and Hollywood films, including the 1996 film Fargo which features the backdrop of a Minnesota winter, but like most of the characters in the movie, the climate is portrayed as bleak and inhospitable.
caption: Ice fishing in Minnesota has been a theme in Hollywood films
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