Thing is, driving on snow isn’t actually that challenging if you have decent tires that will grip into it, and if you can expect the snow to stick around on top of the roads for a few months. It’s predictable. I think this gives northerners a false sense of superiority.
Driving on ice is a lot more challenging, and when the temperature hovers right around 30 degrees you get a lot of places where the snow melts and refreezes, or gets packed into ice, and there’s no amount of good tire short of ice spikes that will help out on that surface. Complicate that with ever-changing conditions where the drivers don’t know if the road ahead is wet, or slushy, or packed ice, and you have a recipe for accidents. It’s completely unpredictable.
eta: The most dangerous road conditions I’ve faced were south of the mason-dixon line, for this reason. Very thin layers of ice are possible when there’s a sudden temperature drop + precipitation. You don’t really get those conditions up north.
Even one blizzard at a time – spaced out – is manageable. It’s those winters when it snows and snows and snows and there’s nowhere to put it and there’s no melt in between. This current one comes after some warm spells so there was melting and not the pile for it to pile on top of.
That one winter in NYC where it just kept snowing and they had to truck snow to the river and dump it in. That’s nuts.
When I moved to Madison years ago, the evening news one night was crowing about firefighters “braving 20-degree temperatures” to fight a fire. It struck me as an odd thing to say, since I had moved there from Fargo, ND, where it was not uncommon to have below-zero temps for days or even weeks on end.
That’s a misleading map. Snow does not respect state lines, it falls on both sides of it just the same. The two cities in the US that get the most snow are Buffalo NY and Flagstaff AZ, but other areas in the same state get much less snow, pullind down the state average, however the hell that is computed. Flagstaff is the second snowiest city in the US, and Yuma remains snowless for decades at a time, so what does that say about how much snow “Arizona” gets? Same for California, which is snowier than Minnesota.
In the media-driven US mentality, a “blizzard” is defined as “snow that falls in the streets outside Rockefeller Center”.
We typically feel sorry as hell for the people in the London area, though, as they’re in the perfect location to suffer severe lake effect snow from any of three surrounding Great Lakes.
I’m just outside of Boston right now and I really don’t think it’s the locals so much who freak out. There are always a few idiots mucking things up, but it’s really the news that ramps things into over the top drama. You can tell all the reporters are so excited to have something to report on. You’d think the alien ships from Independance Day were landing.
Snow is annoying, but I’ll take the relatively gentle temps of New England over the -30 temps of Minnesota any day. *That’s *a hard winter.
I live in Boston area and I promise you that things can get serious really fast. A decade or so ago, there was a major storm that shut down the major arteries. People got trapped, had to abandon their cars and beg for shelter in the nearest houses. A whole lot of people and feet of snow = bad news. Massachusetts in particular is becoming better at handling it. They don’t want employers dumping all their employees out on the road to go home during the middle of a snowstorm so they issue advisories well in advance to tell non-essential employees to stay home. A few years ago, we had a snowstorm so bad that the governor just flat-out closed the entire state for a day.
I make it a point to not make fun of anyone until you know exactly what you are talking about. I have lived in New England for over 20 years but the worst driving conditions I have ever encountered were in the Dallas, TX area during an ice storm. It was terrifying and absolutely uncontrollable. You can’t drive on untreated ice roads no matter how good you think you are. There were jackknifed 18 wheelers everywhere along with pileups of carnage. The same thing happens occasionally in New England or the Midwest when black ice forms. All of those so-called hearty winter drivers suddenly find themselves at the bottom of a heavy metal rugby scrum when they find out quickly that they can’t stop.
The reverse is true as well. People think that they know what hot really is but I doubt they do unless they have spend some time in July or August in New Orleans. People look at the temperature on the news and figure that they understand what 95F is and that they have experienced it at home. No you haven’t. I am from the Deep South myself and it is unfathomably hot. The part they are missing is the humidity is so high that nothing can cool off even at night. Death Valley may have higher true temperatures but summer in the New Orleans to Houston corridor is the hottest place in the U.S. when it comes to apparent temperatures and there is no way around it. It would make Tarzan blush.
I don’t think of them one way or the other, I just wish they would shut up about it. Why is it national news? We just had the same storm come through and nary a peep on the national news about it.
Why do East Coasters think the rest of North America is on the edge of their seats, fretting and worrying about them? It’s snow. They’ll be fine, much like how a big chunk of Ontario is getting a goodly amount of snow today and it’s not national news. We have our own weather to think about, thanks muchly.
The news media is centered in the Northeast U.S. Snow here is obviously much more important than whatever bullshit is going on in Syria or Ukraine or someplace else nobody has ever heard of. Come on, soccer moms (and we don’t even like soccer) have had countless yoga classes cancelled across minor swaths of the land.
I lived in or around NYC for 25 years, and the problem with snow in the city is that virtually everyone’s a pedestrian. That means that the plows create mountains of snow and ice along the streets, and you have to somehow maneuver across/over them to cross the street. Then another plow comes along and knocks you on your ass. Add to that, the store owners who allow their sidewalks to become sheets of ice. Add to that, the ferocious winds. Plus, you’re carrying two armloads of groceries or walking your dog. And if you’re elderly or have limited mobility… fuhgettaboddit. Winter in the city can be beautiful… but deadly.
And don’t even ask me about the Long Island Expressway.
My mom and dad’s introduction to Falmouth Mass was a historic blizzard in 1959 or 60. Dad had just transferred to the Air Base there and they were still unpacking.
We have family photos taken from the 2nd story windows of snow packed high on the house.
Usually the Cape was protected from the worst of the winter storms. But not that time.
We moved back to the South when I was 10. I’m very sympathetic to anyone dealing with heavy snow.
I’m a proud Canadian and survivor of many winters. I called a snow day today for 15-20 cm of snow and stayed home. I am not fond of driving in snow, my little street hasn’t been plowed, and should I find myself bouncing off a guard rail on the highway, my deductible is worth more than a day’s pay. Pretty sure I’m not the only one in my office who called in today.
I also hooked my dogs up to my sled and mushed through the city streets to get to the dog park. Been waiting for this snow all winter.
I got freaked out when I lived in Vermont and viewed it as basically the North Pole. It lived up to expectations because the first winter was a record breaking one. That wasn’t the odd part though. I became visibly disturbed when I drove even further North to visit Canada (Quebec). You might has well have told me that the law of gravity didn’t apply anymore because the concept was incomprehensible. I was already as far north as you could possibly go and yet there was supposedly an oddly similar, but slightly different country, even further north. I walked through the uncanny valley and came back again but I will never be the same.
Yeah, Chicago isn’t particularly snowy. Yes, we’ve had some big snowfalls over the last decade, but 18 inches of snow would be the seventh highest for a snowstorm. 15" or more would make it into the top ten. We’ve never made it to two feet. So, yeah, a foot of snow is significant here. The prospects of eighteen inches make it an event of historical levels.
My wife is from Buffalo. She chuckles a bit at what we consider “a lot of snow.”
