Must be nice living where the air doesn't freeze your lungs.
Illinois can get hostile in the country, in the winter. We don't have it as bad as some do, but in the rural areas you still have to plan ahead.
We had an ice storm that knocked power out as a polar vortex hit this winter. Got down to some ridiculous figure of -20F or so. Ran everything off my 22kw generac for several days waiting it out.
Every year there's fatalities here. Usually from people thinking they can walk from point A to point B without protection. Other times from people abandoning vehicles during storms and freezing before they get to someplace safe. Every fall the winter kit in the vehicles gets a once over, wife, kids, they don't go anywhere without a bucket of supplies and a blanket. We live in the country, and on a nice good calm summer day it takes help 20+ minutes to get to you if you have an accident. Getting stuck in a blizzard? Might be a day before someone can get to you. (A few years back it took a couple of weeks for one accident to even get spotted, after a car ran off the road and down in to a ravine).
Couple years back we hit -24F. Heck, one year I ran an outdoor shooting event during a cold snap, was -14F actual that day. You have to be mighty careful about your breath when shooting at that temp, lest you frost up your scope and end your day early. If your optics aren't coated alcohol wipes can solve it but a lot of optics have coatings these days, and alcohol isn't the best choice to clean 'em.
There's spots it can get worse, much worse, than here in the winter, but midwest winters are no joke. Especially given the frequency of these polar vortexes nowadays, seems to be one hitting every winter.