Not that I’d ever get that much here ( Average over the past 10 years is not quite 6 inches/year ) but I’d rather have it all in one one hit. Not very well prepared here and even a a few inches make driving treacherous. The local management at the place I work has a neofascist approach to attendance, especially in bad weather situations. Unless travel is prohibited by officialdom: you come. You can’t make it and they break your balls with threats and all too many, including me, take risks in getting there and ( not that they give a shit ) coming back.
If we get 5 feet of snow, somehow I think the impossibility of travel would impress even these jerkweeds.
Honestly, I’m not sure it’d matter here- it’d be The End of The World.
Last year we had a maybe 2" snowfall; all the roads were closed, supermarkets were opening as emergency sleeping shelters for people stuck on the roads, cars were abandoned in the main street for days and accidents abounded. It was nearly a week before the town shops were fully stocked again. Shops were closed for 24hrs and schools were closed for around 3 days. 30 times as much…? Honestly, we just wouldn’t cope.
Maybe if we had one inch at a time, we’d manage, after the first few falls, to bring in some snowploughs and gritters and some people (probably some of the farmers, who are generally better equipped) would be able to keep on top of things, but we’d be having buildings collapse, people freezing and starving, pipes bursting, power being lost and the roads would be one giant disaster pretty much regardless. We’re not built for or accustomed to more than a gentle sprinkle of snow or that sort of temperature.
I think most people would bail, if they possibly could, when it started getting over a foot deep, because the shops would be empty and fuel would be running out. If the whole country wasn’t affected, we’d maybe be getting airdrops of food and emergency evacuations, but if this was the case in all of Britain, we’d probably not be a priority area here on the SW tip due to poor access and low population density, and besides, where would they evacuate us to?
Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m just going out to tell the Gulf Stream how much I appreciate it.
If you could do it right now I’d take 1” over the full north to south axis SE Australia and donate the balance to somewhere that the notion of snow wasn’t incongruous.
I’ve been in 10-15" snowstorms. They may paralyze things for a day, but by day 2 things tend to get back to normal.
I think I’d just take 4 days of 15" snow. I really don’t like the idea of 15-30 days of a little bit of snow, because each day there will be possible traffic issues.
More than 12-15" and you risk everything shutting down for more than a day.
That’s about double a normal winter. Saskatchewan might be north, but it’s pretty arid, and actually the last couple years have been drought-ish so some above average winter precipitation would be good. I chose varying amounts in the poll, because that’s how snow normally comes. A few big dumps, a few more moderate dumps, and lots of light dustings.
I’m going for 10 6" storms. That’s enough to feel like a snow storm, and be fun, but little enough that it’s not too hard to shovel (especially since I’m assuming this is light fluffy stuff, not the heavy wet stuff we get if it’s warm while it snows.)
I went with 6 ten inch storms. Enough here in DC to give me several days off during the winter, most likely, while not so much to totally paralyze work and result in terrible catch-up afterwards.
Driving isn’t that important to me since I can walk to various stores to get the necessities.
A big storm that shuts down the city for a couple of days is fun…once. So I’ll take half of it in one big 30-inch dump.
And since the OP says most of the snow won’t melt until spring, it will get dirty and ugly after a while if nothing new is falling. So I’ll take the rest in thirty 1-inch snowfalls to keep everything pretty and white.
If we’re getting 60 inches in Florida, the rest of you are fucked and I assume supplies of staple goods are going to run out in days anyway. But I picked 2" because I hate snow.
As the OP hasn’t answered - I’m assuming I’m dealing with the city not having the means to handle snow.
Anything more than 2 inches and the city starts to shut down. Around 20 and there’s major structural damage to structures that aren’t built to take on that kind of weight. And really, I have no idea what will happen if the snow doesn’t go away. We are completely unprepared to deal with snow that doesn’t go away within a week (or to deal with what will happen when it does start to go away in the springtime, the freeze and refreeze will be a nightmare). So, four 15" dumps, knowing that it’s pretty much all over for the region after the first one - but there might be enough time between them for people to keep their roofs from falling in.
The DC area doesn’t handle snow well so even an inch or two can cause disruption. So to minimize disruption its probably better to have a few big dumps. 60 inches is too much to handle all in one fall, there isn’t anywhere to put it. But 2 dumps of 30 inches would be doable, provided they are spaced apart.
I voted for 3 20-inch dumps for similar reasons (we’re also DC area).
We can shovel 20 inches of snow. We won’t like it, but we can do it. 30 inches is a bit tougher. 20 inches will likely result in similar length of closures (school, offices) as 15 inches, so that’s 3 snowfalls instead of 4.
Around here, even an inch of snow poses a huge traffic mess, school delays / early dismissal, etc. No way would I want to deal with that every other day during the winter.
Now, if I were someplace farther north, where cars are likelier to have things like snow tires / chains, an inch every other day would be no big deal. A bit over a year ago, I visited my daughter ( who does not drive) in Vermont, to take her to an appointment at Dartmouth medical center. It was snowing that day. No problem, think I, I’ve got a rental car with 4 wheel drive. Just to be sure, I Called Dartmouth that morning to make sure they’d be open. I’m quite sure the person I spoke to thought I’d lost my mind: “What? That idiot thinks we close for a lousy 6 inches of snow???”.
Well, even with my 4 wheel drive car, and driving very carefully (I grew up in Pennsylvania, so I did learn how to drive in the stuff), I skated right on through a red light (luckily the cross-traffic had not begun to cross!!!). This was with maybe 4 inches of snow having fallen. I don’t know if fewer cars were on the road than usual; this was mid-morning in a small town.
Interestingly, I popped by the grocery store the day before to pick up lunch supplies for my hotel for the week - and midday, it was quite crowded. Not “DC area ZOMG WE MIGHT HAVE A MILLIMETER OF SNOW” crowded, but surprisingly busy.
On a more recent visit, it snowed off and on all one day. Perhaps an inch total. Nobody even noticed. So up there, yeah, I’d take an inch of snow every other day all winter.
Out of curiosity, what’s not fun about it? The physical exertion, getting the damned thing to work, or getting an entire roof-full of snow in the face and down your shirt?
The saying goes, “four wheel drive is not four wheel stop.” Found that out the first icy day I drove one; luckily there was nobody in the other lane at the time.
ABS is probably some help with this; but not an entire solution.
A three-inch snowstorm is, I think, the optimum balance between an almost-certain snow day from work and likely still-having-power for my area. So I’ll take 20 of those.
We usually get only a few inches, but last year we did have a ten-inch snow event, if you count Monday and Wednesday of the same week as a single event.
What surprised me most was how long that snow stuck around, even though it was warming up to above freezing most days. So I don’t want ti even imagine how long 60" of snow sticks around…