I know for a fact New Yorkers, Bostonians and Philadelphians clown Atlanta whenever a small ice storm or 2" of snow shuts that city down. They wipe their asses with 2-3" snowstorms.
Currently there’s an “blizzard” underway that threatens to drop at least a foot of snow on the Northeast and it’s almost as if North Korea threatened to drop of nuke on the area. So are they now the “clowns”?
Do cities like Chicago, Detroit, Minneapolis and most of Canada “wipe their asses” on 12-18" of snow? Do they laugh at the NE US when shut down by a foot or so of snow?
Or do cities in these climates just accept “shut downs” from foot plus high storms as a matter of course, OR do they just work through them and NE USers just can’t cope?
Are you under the impression that there are people in American who look at New England winters as something other than harsh? According to this map, snowfall in New England and the Great Lake states is comparable to anywhere in the Midwest.
Certainly Alaska and Northern Canada an parts of the Midwest have generally harsher and colder winters. But I think at that point, the needle moves in the other direction towards “why the fuck do you live on ice planet Hoth?”
Interestingly, when I was a child in Erie, PA, we used to actually trudge a mile to school through feet of snow. When we moved to Connecticut in elementary school, my mom got frantic calls from our neighbors after the first dusting of snow asking why her children were standing outside waiting for the schoolbus
Well the reaction in the Northeast is in part due to the long memories of the blizzard of 1978 that shut down the entire northeast from Boston to Philly, or lower, for a week or more to dig out.
I think it depends on the location in the Northeast. While I don’t have any examples, it wouldn’t surprise me to see midwesterers – as well as other, uplander, northeastererners, look down on the coastal cities who don’t receive as much snow. But I don’t think it’s very prevalent if at all since those cities at least know what snow is, unlike the South.
12-18 inches is a lot of snow in much of the Midwest. The average annual snowfall in Chicago is about 37 inches (compared to NYC’s 25ish), and that usually comes in more than 2-3 snows.
Here are the biggest snowstorms ever recorded in Detroit, going back to at least the 1880s. Anything in the 12"-18" range would be in the top 14 ever, and 18" would be the third heaviest snowstorm in at least 136 years.
In Ottawa it’s business as usual. The school boards will stop the buses maybe a half dozen times a year, but no employer will shut down for snow. We’ll be getting 10 to 20 cm (4" - 8") over the next 24 hours. The school buses will still be running with that amount.
I grew up in Minnesota and have lived in the northeast (NYC and Philly) for the past 15 or so years. As a Minnesotan, I still laugh when people in the northeast complain about the bitterly cold temperatures that are in the single digits. That is ridiculously common in Minnesota, where I saw temperatures of -20F and below quite regularly.
I do not laugh at the amount of snow that can be dropped out here, though. The first nor’easter that I lived through, I walked out the front of my apartment building and was faced with a drift that was waist high. I’ve seen over 20 inches of snow in a single snowfall about a dozen times since I’ve lived out here. That never happened in Minnesota. I do still laugh a bit about how long it takes towns to clear the roads, though it has gotten better recently.
Actually, some of the east coast/Great Lakes areas get more snow than we usually do here in Saskatchewan: it’s a dry cold here, as the phrase goes.
Why would I look down on people who are having bad weather? Blizzards can kill. Doesn’t matter if it’s here or in New York. I hope all Dopers in those areas take sensible precautions and respect Mother Nature when she’s having a bad day.
Sure, there may be differences in infrastructure: we can routinely deal with more snow here than they can in Atlanta, but that’s nothing to do with any fake “superiority” - our governments have invested in more snow removal equipment than the governments in Georgia, because we get more snow, and have to be prepared to deal with it.
Quoted for context:
In July 2015 major roads around Sydney were closed due to snow.
The amount of snow involved would have been probably classified as more of a light dusting/heavy frost in the the world’s colder climates, but then again very few Australians have much experience with driving in icy roads.
I grew up in a small town south of Buffalo, New York. (Town of Colden.) It wasn’t uncommon for us to get three feet of snow in a snowstorm. Snow, snow, and more snow.
I now live in Madison, Wisconsin. When I moved here, people warned me over and over that I should prepare for the harsh winters. Well, snowfall here is a joke. Biggest surprise for me was how lousy they are at plowing the roads. Second biggest surprise was the number of people who bring out the snowblower to clear 2" of snow from their driveways.
Speaking as an atlantic Canadian, we don’t concern ourselves with the weather patterns of New Englanders. It’s simply not a topic of news, discussion, or (in my mind) thought.
I always wonder what magical powers people think they would bring that would make NYC completely fine after 18" of snow. Take out all New Yorkers and replace them with all Duluthians (you’ll have to clone them) and I’d be shocked if they find it any easier than New Yorkers do.
Meh. Every time something weather related happens, there’s always someone claiming some sort of superiority, because they don’t get bothered by the same thing. Nonsense.
Biggest problems we have in the DC area, are 1) we don’t have the snow clearing equipment to deal with anything over a few inches; and 2) the population is a mix of people from all over. That last means that while we have plenty of people who DO take snow in stride, we have a lot of people who either have no experience (ex-Floridians and so on), or who just got their first four wheel drive vehicle, and are too thick to realize that no matter how many wheels are driving, if they are all on ice, you’re going to crash if you try to go normal speed.
As a Chicago-area native, I’ve laughed a few times at Virginia/DC when it snowed but major snowfalls seem to have become the standard the last few years. Ironically, when my wife left DC and moved to Chicago her family gave her a bunch of “OMG you’ll freeze to death and all the snow” static. Since then, we’ve had fairly mild winters and they seem to get buried annually.
I’ve never given, nor heard anyone else giving, flack to the people in the New England or New York areas for dealing with the winters. By my thinking, they’re wintery brothers in arms.
It’s also a lot of snow in much of Alaska, where I grew up. I also lived there from 1998-2009. During that time, there was only one huge dump, and that was about two feet. And it did shut much of the city down until the plows could get after it. Prince William Sound is a different thing altogether: a foot of snow is nothing in a town that gets an average of over 300 inches a year. Winters in Anchorage are far less harsh than in places like Montana and Wyoming.
On the other hand, an inch or two will shut Portland down completely.
mrAru’s mother was a Missosuri farm girl, my mom was an Iowa farm girl. Both grew up in the Depression and financial conditions that encouraged thrift and self sufficiency. I grew up mainly in western NY coughGreat Lakes Weather Systemscough
We did a change in duty station from Virginia Beach to Groton CT back in December 1990. A few months later, in Feb they announced a blizzard was going to happen, so we did the fair thing as we were taught by our moms and shopped - toilet paper, canned and dry goods for cooking [vegan minestrone is a favorite] and some beef chuck for chili or stew … batteries, candles, a new lighter and wood for the wood stove. We were all set, and waiting for the huge storm that was going to hit. When we got all of an inch of snow over a day we were still wondering where the freaking blizzard was and figured it passed under us over the sound or over us up in Mass … til they told us it was the worst storm in our area in like 5 years … sigh
Life long Michigander. Meh, folks around here don’t usually ‘laugh’ at the snow hitting places like Boston, NYC or Philadelphia - maybe they don’t get quite as much snow as we do, but these are places that get accumulations regularly every year and the snow doesn’t usually result in paralysis.
We reserve the eye rolls usually for the ‘snow’ falling south of the Mason Dixon line.
Sure, many communities in the south don’t have budgets for salting the roads or snow removal equipment, not to mention drivers having little or no experience driving on icy/snowy roads, but we take full advantage of these opportunities to ‘laugh’ at y’all as repayment for all the comments we get every winter like “dang, it got down to THE 40’s last night. BRRRR!”
