Coping with Snow

[guitartango]

Hi Fretters

If you didnt know, England is covered in snow, stopping trains, motorways and airports. How do other countries cope?

Happy holidays

Mike

[Kazz]

We pull up our knickers and get out and go to work :-)

[sunvalleylaw]

We have a lot of nice, early season snow this year. I hope it keeps coming. We are a ski town, so we cope by going skiing!

Here is a vid from the Saturday before last where I am filming my Freeride team kids I was coaching. Ahh, to be young! I am proud of these guys and their coping skills.

http://s174.photobucket.com/albums/w92/sunvalleylaw/?action=view&current=100_0027.mp4


We have received a bunch more snow since this shot too! That dirty spot they are jumping near is from the dynamite that was set for avalanche control.

Snow brings life and moisture to these dry, rocky high desert mountains. A good snow year transforms these mountains into a magical playground. (different from the magical trails we use in the summer). Falling snow is magical to me. My favorite meditation is to imagine slowly gliding along a snow covered cat track (dirt road used by machinery) effortlessly, watching softly falling snow as it kisses my face.

[Tig]

Unless you live near a ski area like SVL, snow should be avoided as much as possible, preferably by living in a warmer latitude. My A/C actually came on twice yesterday afternoon.
Hope that helps! :poke
:p

[Jimi75]

Everything's been white here for weeks already. This winter is as hard as was last winter. Okay, we are far away from being a snow town haha, but we enjoy the peaceful white a lot.

[Katastrophe]

Like Tig, I believe avoidance is the best policy for dealing with snow.

I'm wearing a short sleeved tee shirt this morning, and the air conditioner is on.

[vroomery]

I moved 2 months ago from North Carolina to West Virginia. It is cold all the time up here! It's kind of nice to have the snow without people getting all crazy about it like in North Carolina. Things pretty much go on as normal...just with snow!

Unless it gets bad of course. Then people will stay in and not be stupid....generally

[t_ross33]

How do we cope? There's a reason there are so many August and September babies here in the Great White North.

Just sayin'...

[ZMAN]

Countries like Canada have a whole infrastucture dedicated to winter snow removal. Within hours of a snowfall all of the streets in our city of 150,000 are plowed. Highways are constantly plowed and sanded and salted to keep them clear.
Our airports, each have literally enough plows to clear a small town.
Most of us have snowblowers. Mine is a 10 horse, 36 inch wide two stage blower, and is self propelled. I can blow the snow across the street if I want to. My driveway is 90feet by 20, and I can do it in less than an hour if we have a foot of snow.
We use winter tires and we have three sets of cloths, summer, fall and winter. Boots, gloves, hats, and insulated coats.
I have a gas fireplace in my family room and of course cental gas heating. We have insulation in our homes up to R40 plus in the ceiling and 25 plus in the walls.
We have specially made insulataed doors and windows to keep out the cold.
I think that a lot of places that are getting whacked recently by "unusual" snow and ice should take notice, and adjust. It is not going to get any better in the future. Those places are not equiped for it. We have to be.
We have done more to change climate in 200 years than what took millions to change.
Most of us who can, will take holidays in the warmer climates in the winter, and a lot even move there for the winter months to avoid the cold.
Last year was the worst year in Florida for many years for cold.
I was there for a month and only got a handful of days over 80 F. The rest were as low as the 30s and usually in the mid 50s. That was in Feb. March and April.
That is how we cope here.

[guitartango]

Thanks for the replies guy's, us brits do not cope with a pinch of snow. It happen last year and this year, you think that we might have learnt a lesson.

oh well..... happy holidays :)

[deeaa]

It's simply a matter of getting experienced with it. Much what ZMAN here said. No problem for our airports while the southern Europe is in chaos. For us it's just regular business. They indeed have dozens of snow removal machines, and they just run along the airstrips constantly in a tight line of 5-7 in a row and make the runway clean as in summer in a matter of a few minutes between landings.

I was just in Scotland and England and one thing I did notice is that houses aren't built for cold at all; there's no space for dumping snow between houses and fences, plumbing is largely outside(!) the buildings and windows are only twin-plated or even single plated type.

It really is no problem living in -30 constantly when you have 3-4 layer windows and plenty of fireplaces - hell my house walls are almost three feet thick! The only thing that causes grief sometimes is cars not starting if you've forgotten to heat it up, but those heating posts are available nigh everywhere, parking lots of workplaces etc. And sometimes driving on roads where you don't really see the actual road :-) as I just posted in another thread:
q_DWULqV4lM

[otaypanky]

Here in my area of Pennsylvania we haven't had any snow yet. It's forecast for a bunch coming today, but all around us, and it might not hit here if we're lucky. But the snow adds to the water table and we're on a well, so no snow at all is not a good thing.
Last year we got hit pretty good. I think one snowfall must have been about 3 feet. I was clearing snow for 2 days
Did anyone see on the news the story about the guy who was away for a trip when they got a blizzard? It must have blown open his doors or windows and his house was filled with snow. Literally a couple of feet of snow filled many areas of his house. His brother in law or someone took video of it as he was helping to clear it out ~

[kiteman]

Hi Fretters

If you didnt know, England is covered in snow, stopping trains, motorways and airports. How do other countries cope?

Happy holidays

Mike

Sell snow cones. :)

Seriously, I'm where I haven't seen snow since '83.

[NWBasser]

Well, I guess like England it doesn't snow very much here. It's a rotten mess when it does though. We have a lot of steep hills and our snow is usually very close to the freezing point which makes it very slick. Add in a bazzillion drivers that have no snow driving skill and it makes for quite a headache.

I have all-wheel drive and studded tires, but with hundreds of stuck cars plugging the roadways, that doesn't help much.

PS - The studded tires and AWD are mostly for going up in the mountains snowshoeing and such.

[Tig]

Get creative!
http://www.shyzer.ca/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/snowwoman.jpg
http://i578.photobucket.com/albums/ss224/beercanhill/snow_skull_b2.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2402/1866670403_70b7a0433d.jpg
http://www.zmetro.com/photos/2007/03/snowart03012007.jpg
http://www.thefunnyblog.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/snow-art-funny-blog-humor-and-fun.jpg
https://s3.amazonaws.com/readers/2010/12/02/snowsculpture05_1.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_tztuXAlr0lw/S3Ajv46SuSI/AAAAAAAABUw/Aekp7Pd6zlw/s400/DSCN5841.JPG

[pedalbuilder]

I gotta say, from the perspective of a former desert rat (raised in Tucson, AZ), the snow/cold of Pennsylvania has been pretty hard to deal with. The way I figured out to stand it is not to hole up, but rather to get outside and enjoy it! Seriously - like the guy said earlier about skiing, but if that's not an option get out and do something - anything - in the cold weather and it will pass more quickly for you.

Or - like I plan to do - move to Miami!!

[piebaldpython]

We had a couple of inches this morning. By 7 PM, it started again and the streets were clearr, nothing to speak of on them. By midnite, 5 hrs later, we were blasted with over a foot of snow (officially, 16.5") on the ground. OMG! I can't believe this storm dumped that much in such a short period of time.

Oh well, off to bed and by this time tomorrow nite, my back will be killing me.

[deeaa]

Here's my driveway:

http://lh4.ggpht.com/_6nk96PAbWiI/TUEjad55EXI/AAAAAAAADiI/RhHMd-IyDzE/IMAG0617.jpg

The problem is, there is no place to put any more snow except haul it all the way to the end of the drive and hoist it over the snowbank.

Here's another pic from the same place other direction - that buried fence is as tall as I am, and behind that is a six feet wide bank of snow accumulated. I try my best to keep the driveways clean but it's getting hard and its so early still - I fear the biggest snowfalls are still to come.

http://lh6.ggpht.com/_6nk96PAbWiI/TUEjh14RxwI/AAAAAAAADiM/CVwwSJkhafs/s640/IMAG0618.jpg

Here's the corner from the main driveway...all the neighbors yards are just as full of snow and the driveway itself has almost become a one-lane street now as there are huge snowbanks on either side.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_6nk96PAbWiI/TUEkicm4NhI/AAAAAAAADik/Fj5AvMWOVP0/IMAG0615.jpg

[Ch0jin]

Wow, that's incredible! And here I was complaining that it was pushin 40c around here the last couple of days. At least I don't have to dig my way out of my house every morning.

I bet your heating bills are low with 3ft thick walls though! When I was in Siberia I was amazed at the thickness of the wood used in home construction. I snapped this to show my father (an ex-builder).

http://members.iinet.net.au/~ch0jin/stuff/siberia.jpg


Using pine of that size in Australia would be insane expensive, but in that part of Russia there are massive silver pine forests so I guess it's the material of choice in rural areas. (Shot in the lakeside village of Listvyanka)

[syo]

Here's the corner from the main driveway...all the neighbors yards are just as full of snow and the driveway itself has almost become a one-lane street now as there are huge snowbanks on either side.

http://lh3.ggpht.com/_6nk96PAbWiI/TUEkicm4NhI/AAAAAAAADik/Fj5AvMWOVP0/IMAG0615.jpg

Say, Dee...
Is that ladder leading to the second floor there in case you can't get out the front door? At first I conceived of this question as a joke and then it seemed to me that might be it's purpose after all (considering all that snow).

[deeaa]

Yes full log built houses are made here as well, but not just with the log except for summer houses, usually there's a foot of insulation to boot. My summer house is built of solid logs a foot thick but you can't really stay there in winter as it has no other insulation than wood and only twin plated windows too. Wood is what we have plenty of here indeed, I myself probably own a thousand pines and spruces, birches and such...impossible to count of course. How many trees are there in a couple of hectares of woods? I've no idea.

My house was made in 53' and it's been renovated, and it's built of wood - not solids - but there's nearly dozen layers of wood and insulation; from inside it goes like : gypsum sheet, moisture seal (aluminum sheet), wood plank layer, 4 inch wood bars every two feet with the gap in between filled with sawdust, another layer of wood planks, a ventilation gap, a third layer of thicker planks (about an inch thick, then another 4x4 support stucture now layered with 4 inches of glass fibre insulation, then a thick kind of woollen type but hard windbreaker layer, then a wood wall with an air gap, then the outer wall.

For electricity, including heating, my bill is about $3200 per annum, but I also use wood to burn for which I spend ~300 more per year. Somewhere around 25.000 KW/h I believe off the top of my head for electricity, and the biggest bulk of it is of course heating...so I'd say three grand a year is a good estimate for heating costs.

[deeaa]

Hehe, nope it's just the mandatory fire escape ladder.

[kiteman]

Hehe, nope it's just the mandatory fire escape ladder.

Either that or your daughter can sneak out and elope. :poke

[kidsmoke]

Diggin' the Peugeot, too. Use to be lots of those around back in the day. Haven't been imported to the US for, I don't know....25 years??

Still, all that snow gives you a reason to head outdoors, Chicago gets very little, comparatively, so there's nothing to do for 5 months....

I'm guessing you have a pretty good machine to help with your efforts.

[deeaa]

Peugeots are quite popular here; they aren't hugely expensive and come in a big variety of roomy sizes for the price. Moreover they are very good drivers and don't rust at all thanks to being galvanized. Very sensible trusty cars, if not exuding class or germanic ruggedness. Divide opinions, I guess.

Being French many people complain they've got lots of small nuisances and electrical issues; I myself don't think they have any more than others, but thanks to some people sneering at any other than German-made etc cars, or some who will only buy a Toyota...anyway Peugeots are quite reasonably priced used. Not as cheap as the other 'Baguettes' like Citroen and Renault, but still pretty affordable.

As for the daughter thing - good thing I haven't any :-) but I myself did use them ladders from my room countless summer nights in my early teens to slip out when I was supposed to be sleeping...(I've lived in this house since I was seven years old or so)

[Robert]

Here's what our streets looks like right now.

We got 54 cm of snow in 2 days.

http://www.thefret.net/imagehosting/thum_74d41945705064.jpg (http://www.thefret.net/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=1892)

[deeaa]

Here's what our streets looks like right now.

We got 54 cm of snow in 2 days.

http://www.thefret.net/imagehosting/thum_74d41945705064.jpg (http://www.thefret.net/vbimghost.php?do=displayimg&imgid=1892)

Could be shot from our street in the spring when it's starting to melt (road seems pretty melted).

[sunvalleylaw]

Beautiful picture deeaa! I love all the snow covered trees. As you know, we have a winter wonderland over here, but it is more high desert with skinny pine and fir trees as opposed to the big forests I grew up with in the Cascades.

We need some new snow too. We started out well, but have been dry for a few weeks now. We need that jet stream to re-set itself and stop dumping on all those eastern cities that don't really want or need it.

[marnold]

Actually, if you want to see snow, go up to the Keweenaw peninsula (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keweenaw_Peninsula) in Michigan's upper peninsula. Because it juts out into Lake Superior, it just gets nailed with lake-effect snow. Michigan Tech keeps track of the annual snowfall (http://www.mtu.edu/alumni/favorites/snowfall/snowfall.html). If you go back, just about every decade has one year with 300+ inches. Perhaps not coincidentally, the vast majority of people up there are of Finnish descent.

If you go up to Houghton (where Tech is) or Calumet you will find a lot of homes with doors on the second floor that go to nowhere. It looks very odd in the summer, but that is the only way to get out in the winter. A good friend of mine went to Tech. He said that one of the big things to do in the winter is to jump out the third floor windows of the dorms. Normally that would be suicidal, but in the winter there's plenty of snow to catch you.

By way of comparison, Green Bay has had a couple of record snowfall years recently, with totals of ~87 inches. Average is roughly 47 inches. "Frozen tundra" indeed.

[Tig]

70 degrees F and partly cloudy today.... What snow?
:bootyshake :yum

http://c2686552.cdn.cloudfiles.rackspacecloud.com/11d5e8dc-31ed-4564-9bec-168033d0c952.jpg