Same here in Winnipeg (about the block heaters I mean). Your engine block can actually crack if it gets cold enough and you don't plug your block heater in.
That can happen in Florida, as well...cracked blocks, popped freeze plugs. Happened to me...this old '74 Le Mans...left it there and rode w/a friend who was moving back to Flint, holidays, took the bus home from Flint. Get back after the holidays, start up the car, dummy light comes on. Freeze plugs. I was lucky...some had cracked blocks...in North Florida.
The Hawkeyes played at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville that year...frozen pipes, toilets a no-go at best, a foul mess. Then...there was the time it snowed when I was in Baton Rouge...heard all this gleeful screaming...pile of Vietnamese living in the same building...in the ghetto...as the song has it. They were making snowmen...w/anatomically correct appendages...honeymoon appendages.