# Upper Midwest and Canadian dopers: Tell me about the cold. How do you handle it? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [February 22, 2005, 8:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394 "2005-02-22T20:05:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Agrippina](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8797f3/32.png) [@Agrippina](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Agrippina)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/61 "2005-02-24T14:46:22Z")
I live in Kansas City, Missouri and while it doesn’t get as cold as say Iowa or Minnesota, it can get pretty cold at times. The way I deal: It helps to not think of how long winter is, but just to take it one day at a time. ---
**Author:** ![GingerOfTheNorth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cdc98d/32.png) [@GingerOfTheNorth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GingerOfTheNorth)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 2:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/62 "2005-02-24T14:50:39Z")
> [@featherlou](#): > > \fall in Calgary is long and beautiful. I would say it is our best season. Agreed. Mild temperatures and beautiful colours. Although, not much red in the leaves. ---
**Author:** ![Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Helen\_s\_Eidolon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Helen_s_Eidolon)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/63 "2005-02-24T14:56:00Z")
Dissenting voice: you just deal, but you don’t necessarily get used to it. I’ve lived in Montreal all my life and I just cannot stand winter. For the record, I’m a public transport person, which makes it harder. ---
**Author:** ![Foible](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/3d9bf3/32.png) [@Foible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Foible)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/64 "2005-02-24T16:21:08Z")
I love the cold and I miss the New England winters. When it got down to zero I’d go outside barefoot if the snow was right. If there was bare ground or crusty snow I’d be afraid of cutting my feet but if there was a dry powder then I’d do my outdoor chores shoeless. The dry snow would just rest on my skin, not melting but shaping to my feet with every step. Twenty minutes was my limit, I didn’t want frostbite. I miss the beard icicles too, my thanks to the earlier poster who reminded me of them. Free water with nothing to carry! The world sounds different in the cold, noises seem sharper with more echoes, and the air is never so clear as on a cold day. I live in Oregon now, in a place where twenty above is about as cold as it gets. People ask me if my feet get cold when I wear sandals year round. I just laugh and tell them “it doesn’t get cold here.” ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 4:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/65 "2005-02-24T16:23:32Z")
I would rather walk in the cold than wait for a bus in the cold. At least with walking your body starts to warm up pretty quick. (Calgary has had snow in every month too. We just plant our stuff and cross our fingers.) ---
**Author:** ![GingerOfTheNorth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/cdc98d/32.png) [@GingerOfTheNorth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GingerOfTheNorth)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/66 "2005-02-24T16:32:26Z")
School is closed here (Baltimore County) today. For snow. A whopping 5 inches expected. My entire life, I never heard of a snow closure, until I moved here. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/67 "2005-02-24T17:10:40Z")
Had a couple snow closures when I was a kid. Of course, rural setting, long schoolbus rides, etc. Sometimes it’s just physically impossible to get to school until the road’s been opened. Still, it wasn’t more than a handful of days for my whole time in school. The one time the schoolbus got well and truly stuck in a blizzard was on the way home, not on the way to school, sadly. It was I think 9pm when we finally got home. Had we been going the other way, it would have been much less unpleasant. ---
**Author:** ![Cisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ccd318/32.png) [@Cisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cisco)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/68 "2005-02-24T17:22:59Z")
> [@GingerOfTheNorth](#): > > School is closed here (Baltimore County) today. For snow. A whopping 5 inches expected. > > My entire life, I never heard of a snow closure, until I moved here. Where I grew up, we could and did have snow closures on relatively warm, sunny days. It was a tall, elongated county with mountains at the very top. If it snowed even a 1/2" in those mountains, we were out of school. I lived at the very bottom of the county, about 60 miles away. ---
**Author:** ![Athena](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/35a633/32.png) [@Athena](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Athena)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/69 "2005-02-24T17:30:08Z")
There’s something like 5 or 10 “snow days” built into the school year here. We have to get a fair amount of snow and/or ice overnight for them to close school, but they do on occasion. A typical snow day is one on which it’s snowed overnight, accumulated 8 or 10 inches, and it’s still snowing in the morning. Even though the city has some huge budget for snow removal (If I remember right, close to $1 million on a bad year, for a town of 20K people) and do an amazing job at it, sometimes it just gets too much. ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394/70 "2005-02-24T17:35:21Z")
So far, no snow days for us (that I was aware of). Mind you, Toronto hasn’t had any big snowfalls until recently… [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/upper-midwest-and-canadian-dopers-tell-me-about-the-cold-how-do-you-handle-it/291394.md?page=3)