I’ll take snow over a hurricane any day.
I’ve lived in the Chicago area for 50 years or so. I think I have had to shovel snow (maybe) five times.
It sucked. No question about that. But really not a big deal.
The heat is there all the time.
It snows an average of 38 inches per year in Chicago. I find it hard to believe you’ve only had to shovel 5 times in 50 years. Do you live in an apt/condo or somewhere where someone else has to shovel?
ETA: There are 107 miles of Chicago streets where one cannot park (overnight) between Dec 1 and Apr 1 to facilitate snow removal.
In my suburb, the restriction is no parking anytime there’s 1+ inch of snow.
38 inches spread across three or four months.
Usually it is a few inches in one storm and it goes away fast. Normal traffic smushes it away or it melts on a warmer day and so on. Some places shovel. Some do not. Streets are handled by the city and usually you need to do no more than shovel your walkway of a few inches…if that. A broom would suffice. Scatter some salt and done. Most times it is not a big deal.
Once in a while we get whomped by snow that shuts the city down. Then shoveling suuuucks (and the city is overwhelmed and I am digging out a parking spot). 98% of the time…not a problem at all.
I think the last time I struggled with driving and snow in Chicago was 2004 (give or take…I do not remember exactly).
Nitpicks aside the main takeaway is it is not a monster problem the city struggles with. Chicago is used to snow and mostly handles it pretty well. Once in a blue moon the city gets hit hard.
I’m sorry, but only needing to shovel 5 times in 50 years (once a decade) in the Chicago area is simply not credible.
Besides, don’t you shovel the sidewalk in front of you house for the benefit of your neighbors trying to get to the bus stop, school, work, etc.?
And snow blowers are a popular item over by the Ace Hardware. Why would all of those people buy them if they only needed them once every 10 years?
How about 21.2 inches Feb 1-2, 2011 and 19.3 inches Feb 1-2 2015?
Most of the shoveling I did was as a kid when my parents made me shovel the driveway.
Living downtown for the last 30 years shoveling amounted to the walk to the front door. That was so minor I do not count it. A broom sufficed most times and took three minutes (if that).
I have had a few times digging out a spot on the street for my car. I remember 1998 (I think) and that was awful. That is when people put chairs and things in those spots to “claim” them since they went to so much trouble digging them out (that has happened since then too but I didn’t have to deal with it).
I remember a year where Lake Shore Drive got so inundated with snow that everyone was stuck. Fire engines were coming down the southbound lanes to rescue people. Cars abandoned. City busses abandoned. It was pretty bad.
But people like you seem to think it is some snowpocalypse here every year when it really isn’t. The city runs fine and only very rarely gets hit by snow so bad that it causes huge problems. We are not having to shovel snow daily.
This is becoming a hijack, so I’ll stop. Someone could post a poll to see how often Chicago area residents shovel snow. I tried; I couldn’t figure out how to do so.
California also has the worst traffic I’ve ever seen (LA is home of the 3am traffic jam for a reason) and it doesn’t get any better the further you go from L.A. (why does TEMECULA have hour long traffic jams?!), high taxes, constant road construction which seems entirely just to lay in new pipes and leave the shitty road on top intact, it’s gets to 110 degrees in the summer, and the most homeless people I’ve ever seen.
Then again these are all SoCal problems.
What’d you do in 1978-1979? I shoveled more than 5 times that winter alone (and then moved far away for good). My sister dated a guy that winter through early spring and never did find out what color his car was, as it was encased in snow/ice all winter.
I was 11. I didn’t shovel. My older brother did.
But I remember that well. School was cancelled for a week at a time. Awesome!
I also remember my parents bought a snow blower near the end of that mess and I think we used it once after.
We own a condo in God’s Waiting Room (a.k.a. Southern Florida). This was not by choice; long story behind it, but the parents needed a place to live.
They moved to Florida because they could not deal with the New Jersey winters as they got older. They were used to the insane traffic and urban sprawl because, New Jersey. They don’t do outdoor stuff, so the beaches were never a draw for them nor were the theme parks.
The winters are quite mild, obviously. The summers (which start in late March and go through early November, in my experience) can be brutal - but, air conditioning.
They loathe the politics. They have no social life to speak of - they could just as easily be homebound nearer family (we’re physically nearest, at a thousand miles away).
And "God’s Waiting Room’: their county has a large number of 55+ communities - in fact the condo we bought is one such, because they are a lot more affordable than real housing. I’ve gone on record as saying that if my choices are to move to a 55+ community, or shooting myself, it’s time to learn how to handle a weapon.
Interestingly, there are places in Florida that I would enjoy visiting. I was disappointed to not have a chance to go to the beach when we were down there a few weeks ago. I used to enjoy Disney, but that place has marketed itself so successfully that it is now an exercise in misery.
I’d love to visit the Florida Keys, and some of the historical areas.
But yeah, aside from having family there now, I have close to zero desire to visit Florida for any other reason.
Insurance is definitely higher. Can’t speak to auto insurance, but homeowner’s insurance - on an 850 square foot condo - is more than on our much larger house that is worth 10 times as much in Virginia. Property taxes are about one seventh of our house here - so somewhat higher rate (in Florida) but not quite as big a jump.
There are a lot, Lot, LOT of NY/NJ expats living in the Florida area. The in-laws’ best friends were from New York. There’s an old joke that the longest bridge in the world is in southern Florida because it connects Manhattan to Miami.
You really pegged that, m’friend. Maryland gets one major snowfall about every 12-15 years and they just don’t have the equipment to handle it.
I was probably too flippant with my previous answer. Between my asthma and the (un-diagnosed) Seasonal Affective Disorder, it seemed to get harder to breath every winter. Couple that with the humidity and anything done outside was rough. Having no great love for the Free State, I high-tailed it at the first opportunity.
Now, Florida humidity is no picnic, either, but freezing humidity seems to hurt my lungs a lot more than the boiling kind.
Colorado Springs averages pretty close to the same amount. Yet we have a law that property owners must clear their sidewalks within 24 hours after each snowfall ends.
I agree Whack-a-mole is underestimating the snow Chicago gets, but I do agree that it isn’t as big of a deal as some folk claim - or as bad as places like Buffalo seem to get. Even with the worst snowstorm, in a day - maximum 2 - the streets are drivable. And we’ve never lost power for more than a few hours. Nothing like I’m hearing about FLA doing right now, preparing for the next hurricane.
The wineries? 
I would say that in Chicago localized flooding from supercell rainstorms is a bigger inconvenience than snow.
That and the fact that every single one of them is 5 miles down a 1 1/2 lane road. I-15 moves along fairly smoothly. It’s once you get off the freeway that things come to a grinding halt. The city just wasn’t designed for the traffic it has developed.
A few years ago, I visited in the Jacksonville area for an early April wedding. The weather was beautiful, and Jacksonville is an amazing, modern city on the go.
I also visited Fort Lauderdale in August on a business trip. It was awful. You couldn’t walk 10 feet before you were covered in sweat.
Not long after the Jacksonville trip, that part of the station was hit by a hurricane that hopscotched all over the state, wreaking havoc and destruction in its wake.
Close to 50 years ago, I lived in Central Florida, an area that hadn’t been hit by a hurricane in decades. Just in the last few years, it’s been hit badly, several times.
I hate the cold and snow and ice of the Northeast, but at my age I don’t want to live anywhere that requires me to store sheets of plywood in my garage for the purpose of boarding up my house against the weather.
And then there’s the politics, but that wouldn’t concern me too much. I already live in an extremely red county that could be picked up and moved to the Deep South and would feel right at home.