Northern Cities Vowel Shift and the cot-caught merger.

I've read many articles that suggest that the northern cities vowel shift and the cot-caught merger cannot coexist. Well, It's simply not true for me and many people here in Minnesota who have the NCVS along with the cot-caught merger. Those articles are misleading. The NCVS and the cot-caught merger clearly coexist in my speech.

Yes, the NCVS is not the same homogenous process all thruout the Northern Midwest. I know some people from northern Minnesota who are "cot-caught" merged yet very progressive along the NCVS.

So is your caught/cot more like /A/, /Q/ or /O/?

It's /A/, but can approach /a/ due to the NCVS.

My vowel in cot/caught sounds like the vowel in this recording of someone saying ''talk'':

http://www.utexas.edu/courses/linguistics/resources/socioling/talkmap/talk-kan.html

One issue here though is whether the NCVS is being superimposed on top of a dialect that is already cot-caught merged versus the possibility of cot-caught merger being introduced into a dialect already having the NCVS. I bet that it would be quite easy for the former to occur, as it would be effectively just gaining the NCVS minus the /O/ position in it. On the other hand, the latter is probably still possible, even though it would probably be not as likely overall.

Yes, as Travis said, it's quite plausible that dialects which had already been "cot-caught" merged prior to the NCVS have since acquired most of the features of the NCVS, with obvious modifications regarding "cot" and "caught." Without further evidence to point to the contrary, this explanation would seem the most likely in my view.