How Iowa Mom Fights To Keep Her Four Kids Warm as Temperatures Drop to -16

A working mom-of-four has offered a glimpse of what life is like for a family living through the extreme weather conditions currently engulfing Iowa.

Iowa was hit by an Arctic blast over last weekend that brought with it heavy snow, strong winds and bone-chilling temperatures. Earlier in the week it was reported that temperatures in Des Moines had dropped to 40 degrees lower than those recorded in Moscow.

Maddy Wisecup and her husband Tyler are no strangers to Iowa’s extreme weather, having been born and raised here. “Iowa has always been our home, so we are familiar with all of the crazy weather that the Midwest gets,” she told Newsweek.

Even so, this latest storm has been keenly felt by the family. “The wind is so incredibly strong we could feel the drafts coming through the walls, windows and the outlets,” she said.

The weather has become more of a challenge to Wisecup and her family since they moved to their current home, which dates back 130 years. Some of those challenges were highlighted in a video posted to TikTok under the handle maddywisecup.

In the video, Wisecup revealed how she and her husband Tyler, along with their four kids Ryder, Camden, Kayn and Sylvia have taken to sleeping on the couch together to keep warm with temperatures around -16 F with a windchill of – 40 F. According to the video, at present their house is “not insulated enough” to keep out the cold.

Despite facing “four-foot drifts” of snow on the roads around them, Wisecup and her husband braved the elements, wrapping up warm to go and maintain their neighbor’s farm, while they are on vacation, and also head into town. They had intended to use her husband Tyler’s truck but the freezing temperatures meant it had “gelled up” and was out of action.

Thankfully, Wisecup and her husband were then able to drop their kids off to warm up at their grandparents’ house before heading off to Walmart to buy some essentials that included dog food, snacks for the kids and, most importantly of all, temporary window insulation sheets.

Upon returning home, they set about installing the sheets on “every single window in the house” in preparation for the night ahead. Happy that they now have a “good temperature” throughout the house, Wisecup ended the video by confirming that they all returned to sleeping in their beds.

Buoyed by her husband, four kids and a trio of dogs that includes two Great Pyrenees, Willow and Finnegan, and Remi, who Wisecup says is “the smartest Australian Shepherd you’ll ever meet,” she insisted they have plenty of strategies to help stay safe and warm.

“We do have a few space heaters strategically placed around the house, but mainly everyone congregates in the living room where we then hang blankets over doorways and the already plastic-covered windows,” she said. “We keep tons of blankets on the couch where we all snuggle up and sleep during these cold nights, and drink lots of hot chocolate and have warm meals and ‘picnics’ in front of the space heaters! The kids love it and think it is so much fun.”

Wisecup said she and her family moved in 2015 into their current home, a former school house that dated back to 1896, after falling “instantly in love” with it during a look around the property. “Although our previous house was perfect, we dreamed of having more land for our kids to run and play,” she explained. “You can see for miles in all directions, with no super close neighbors,” she said. “This was where we wanted to put our roots down and raise our family.” But while she adored the “old cozy feel” of the property, Wisecup said she and her husband were well aware that it “needed a lot of work and updating.”

It didn’t take long following the move to realize there would be challenges to living in such a remote location. “Our first winter moving out to the country with no wind blocks from any direction, was quite eye-opening considering we had been used to living down in a valley where wind was never an issue,” she said. “Going from a newly built house to a house that was very old, it quickly became evident that our new country home lacked quality insulation.”

A former cardiac nurse who now works as a school nurse, Wisecup is keen to stress that their house is insulated. “It just isn’t insulated well” and the winter storms that have swept over the region have been known to cause issues. “We have had winter storms that cause us to lose power and our inside temperature will drop to the 50s in a very short time,” she said.

Though Wisecup and her husband were able to remodel the kitchen and laundry room, further plans were hindered by the pandemic, which saw the price of raw materials surge, and the August 2020 Midwest derecho. “We sustained major damage to the house, HVAC [heating, ventilation and air conditioning] unit, roof, and outbuildings,” Wisecup said. “Luckily, insurance helped cover the repairs of the roof and a small portion of the siding, but everything else we paid for out of pocket.”

Despite these setbacks, Wisecup has always maintained a positive, can-do attitude which comes through in her TikTok posts. “I have had so much fun sharing our busy life and love to encourage and uplift others by reassuring them that nobody is perfect and parenthood is hard,” she said.