I remember the winter of 1968 traveling by train across the country from Cleveland, Ohio, where my boyfriend Jerry and I spent Christmas with our parents celebrating our engagement, to Bozeman, MT., where we were MSU students. We spent a miserable day in Chicago while I tried to sleep in a theater and then on the terminal benches with the Hong Kong or Asian flu awaiting our railroad transfer to Montana. As we went across North Dakota the train's engine froze up and we were stuck for an additional 24 hours without heat out in the hinterland. We eventually arrived in Bozeman and as I recall it was 10-14 days before the temperature got above 30 degrees below zero. (I don't think I have the year wrong -- it could have been 1967. But since I am no longer married to Jerry, don't care!).
It was one of those memorable experiences...and we still had school when we got back. Extreme cold does not stop school in Montana.