Ten years ago my two younger brothers and I went skiing in the Tetons (Idaho). The runs already had a six-foot base and it started snowing really heavily when we got there, creating the bestest most fluffiest powder I’ve ever gone skiing on.
The day was magical due to the conditions, the very rare opportunity to get together with brothers I lived 3,000 miles away from, and – most-importantly – forming a lovely memory of my youngest brother, who committed suicide a few months later.
I grew up across the lake from Buffalo. The evening news during the winter was usually a combination of house fires and snowed in road reports. When I was a little guy, figured that they would do better with oil furnaces rather than burning their houses to keep warm. As I grew older, I relized that they burned their houses all year around.
Camping by in the snow isn’t bad, when done properly. I absolutely hate waking up to knock the ice off my boots and clothes before getting dressed though. For a person that is proudly Canadian, I loathe being cold.
I think I was the only person who though of the obvious:
At a time when anyone could walk into any building on any college campus:
People who lived on one side of campus and had a class in a building on the other side of campus would trudge along the sidewalks.
I went into the first building I came to, walked through the dry and heated space and then into the next building.
The campus was a very boring rectilinear layout, meaning the buildings all aligned one after the other.
This also worked for the springtime rainstorms.
And: for driving:
A 1965 VW bug with studded snow tires had the engine weight over the drive wheels, and high, skinny tires under a smooth pan undercarriage.
No cabin heat, but that puppy could track over snow that paralyzed the big Detroit iron of the age.
January 1996. Two feet of snow in about 16 hours. Two feet of snow on top of two feet of already fallen snow. Most snow I’ve ever seen in my life.
Two personal stories and one that happened to my brother’s friend.
I was heading east and was looking for our exit, but could not see very much because the headlights were reflecting off the snow. I opened my window to stick my head out so I could try to read the road signs, and the car immediately filled up with snowflakes. My wife (in the passenger seat) opened her window and the snow blew straight through. However, sticking my head out of the window provided more visibility than peering through the windshield.
2. For the past few years, my wife and I only had one car and a motorcycle. I rode the motorcycle to work, a distance of about 24 miles. (We live just south of Kansas City.) I would ride at all times of the year, including in the winter. The only thing I wouldn’t ride in was if it were icy or snowing. If it were really cold or the conditions were too dangerous, I would walk to the bus stop and ride the bus downtown.
One day, I had a very important meeting at work, but somehow, got delayed at home and missed the final bus downtown. My wife was already at work and I had no way to get the car.
It was 13 degrees Fahrenheit out, but the ground was bone dry. I dressed in as many layers as I could: long-johns, lined jeans, heavy cold-weather riding pants, double socks, boots, T-shirt, long-sleeved shirt, sweatshirt, heavy jacket, neck gaiter, balaclava (that pulled up over my mouth and nose), full-face helmet, light inner-gloves, heavy outer gloves. Needless to say, I did not have electric riding gear.
I was less than a half mile from home before I realized this was about the dumbest thing I had ever undertaken; not just because of the cold, but because I could barely move. It was so cold, my reaction time was miserably slow.
By the time I had gone about 10 miles, my legs started tingling ominously. I got to work and was finally able to thaw out. Coming home that evening, the temperature was a relatively balmy 25 degrees.
After that, I decided that in cold weather, my limit was one-mile-per-degree. Since I lived 24 miles away from work, I would only ride to work if the temperature was 24 degrees or higher.
Also, when it was cold, I got up earlier than normal and made sure I got to the bus stop on time.
Snow:
When I was a little kid, I lived in Erie, PA, about a mile from the lake shore. We got ridiculous amounts of snow, so school closures were fairly frequent. As it happened, there was a school at the edge of our neighborhood, and through some peculiarity of architecture, a massive snow drift reliably formed in one spot and allowed you to climb up onto the roof of the school. From there, it was great fun to jump off of the edge of the school into other large drifts.
Cold:
I went to college in Fargo, ND, which got plenty of snow, cold and wind. One January it got really cold, down to -20F at night. We went out into a friend’s garage (no wind). It was detached, so it was truly as cold in there as ambient. And in there, we blew soap bubbles. Filled with warm breath, they would rise at first - and then once they cooled, they would begin to sink. On the way down to the ground, they froze; when they hit the ground, they didn’t pop, they just kind of crumpled a bit like plastic wrap.
I’ve been in a few cold and snowy situations (Tromsø at Christmas, Chicago in the blizzard of 1979), but the worst situation I ever found myself in was in Asheville, NC, one New Year’s Eve.
My wife and I attended a wedding (which had to be delayed for a couple hours due to snow) and we were headed back to our hotel. I wasn’t too worried because I was driving an Isuzu Trooper with old-fashioned 4WD and light-duty mud and snow truck tires. We got on I-240, where there was virtually no traffic at all, and crawled along at around 10:00P. The snow intensified a bit and we found ourselves in a total white-out. We could not see a thing. We knew we were at an interchange, but there were no tire tracks at all and the snow made everything, including the shoulders and exits, look exactly the same. We couldn’t even see the roadway lights. I had to come to a complete stop in the middle of the interstate. We couldn’t even tell which direction to go to get to the shoulder.
Finally, after about 15 minutes, the snow let up enough so that we could see the lights and could follow them at least a little bit. I know I spent most of the time on the shoulder or the unpaved area beyond it as I drove to the exit for the hotel.
We got back safely, but I’ve never been so scared of being struck by another vehicle.
Once I was driving in a snowstorm. The roads were a mess, but I had to go somewhere for work. I was on the highway and driving at the speed limit and I was in the slow lane. Then, in the passing lane, a flatbed truck hauling a manufactured house (not a shed) went zooming by me as if I were standing still.
Last Christmas we got a couple feet during the day–pretty close to a blizzard. Damn it, I was going skiing! The price was having to chain up my full-sized pickup to get down the 1.5 mile county road to our house. 3-4’ drifts, snow coming over the hood. Without chains, no way.
3 Christmas’s ago I had to take the snowblower all the way out the driveway to the county road (6-700’) to get our friends who had spent the night out. Again a full-size pickup with good snow tires.
Probably the most extreme was the ice storm in the mid-seventies. Likely the one mentioned previously. We were in Maine and there was inches of ice. Enough to easily support a full grown man over the foot of snow on the ground. No power for 4 or 5 days. We happened to have a wood cookstove as well as a range, and we ended up huddled in the kitchen with that stove as our only source of warmth. I was about 5. Trees would come down on a regular basis and sounded like explosives going off. Good sledding, though!
In South Dakota my grandmother has seen it snow every month of the year except August. Granted that was decades ago.
I live in Saskatchewan and I’ve seen snow in every month except July. (The snow i remember in one early June was just a skiff that didn’t last, but I do remember a heavier one in late August.)
Recently, I travelled from Las Vegas to Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada. My trip required a connecting flight through Calgary.
I arrived at McCarran in Las Vegas with two hours (as recommended) to spare. Only to find that my flight was delayed three hours. Seems the aircraft began its day in Montreal, and between weather conditions and de-icing, was three hours late into Calgary. Thus, it was three hours late into Las Vegas. I killed five hours in McCarran.
Finally, I get in the flight to Calgary. We land, at 1830 hours–twenty minutes too late to catch the 1810 connecting flight to Lethbridge. The Air Canada agent in Calgary meets me with, “Okay, Mr. Spoons, you’ve missed your flight, but we’ve rebooked you on the midnight flight to Lethbridge…”
I stopped her. “Hang on. I killed five hours at McCarran, thanks to weather delays in Montreal, and now I have to kill five-plus hours in Calgary only to get home to an airport where I’ll have to wait an hour for a taxi, because they just don’t go to Lethbridge Airport regularly, much less after midnight? And this all started thanks to weather in Montreal? Hell, my whole flight time is what? Three or four hours? And I have to wait ten-plus hours in airports to do that?”
“We’ll give you a meal voucher…?”
I looked at her as if she was joking. Something about my expression must have done something, because she grabbed her phone, and talked to somebody. Then she looked at me. “Mr. Spoons, given the delays you’ve experienced, and will experience tonight, would you be willing to have a hotel room, on Air Canada’s dime? We can get you out on the first flight to Lethbridge tomorrow.” I happily accepted. A hotel room may not have been home, but at least I wasn’t waiting on an airport bench for five-plus hours yet again. The next day, I got out on the morning flight, and made it home.
I remember the Calgary Air Canada agent’s name: Arielle. Thank you, Arielle! Air Canada must take a lot of complaints, but thanks to you, I have none about my recent trip. You made my rough trip a little easier. Thanks again!
I’ve pulled that move before. We don’t get much snow here so we don’t get a lot of practice. I was young and driving back from a date and despite driving at what I thought was a very sensible pace, still did a full 360 while exiting a roundabout. It was so slow that I certainly didn’t think I was going to die, I just wondered whether I was going to slide (a) into something unyielding and bash the car, or (b) off the road into a ditch and get stuck. In the event, I did neither, instead performing one stately revolution before continuing on my way.
Spoons, glad to hear you’re back safe and sound. And props for Air Canada’s Arielle for making it good.
I know someone at Air Canada. I’m going to pass a link along…
Snowstorms just aren’t what they used to be. A couple winters ago I passed by a couple of geezers talking about the epic snowfall they’d witnessed the day before. “Why, you could barely see across the street!”. They were talking about a storm that dropped less than an inch of snow. :rolleyes:
If Grandma saw snow in South Dakota in July I suspect she may have been getting into the sippin’ whiskey.
I personally both saw snow falling and played golf in every month of the year within 90 miles of my house when I lived in Wyoming.
The summer snow was on fairly high mountain passes and the golf was due to the frequent Chinook winds that used to blow in from the east during the winter and temporarily boost the temps to the 50s or 60s.
My college team held a popular winter rugby tournament every year.
My rookie year, the temperature (with wind chill) at the start of the first match was -73°F according to the local airport.
Along with several layers of long underwear on my body, I wore a stocking cap duct-taped to my head and tied a t-shirt around my face as a sort-of scarf. At one point in the game, I blinked my eyes and they froze shut!. I had to take off my gloves and rub them with my hands to open them up.
The referee’s whistle froze to his lips.
There were 2 players from a Milwaukee area club who demonstrated their bravado by playing in normal rugby shorts and socks on their legs, they both spent multiple days in the local hospital with severe frostbite.
In the late 80s, I was living in Philadelphia. There was a huge snowfall, a once in a lifetime type event for Philly.
I was on a SEPTA bus, on my way home. I was not dressed appropriately, and was dreading walking the final 50 or so yards from my bus stop to my apartment.
A mile and a half from my stop, the bus driver pulled to the curb and announced that he quit. He said they didn’t pay him enough to drive in a blizzard. He opened the door, shut the bus off, and split. I assume he lived in west Philly (where we were). The bus was full of people, including elderly folks, moms with babies, etc. I don’t know what happened to them, but I started walking. One step after the other.
