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/w...t=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!

[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:

[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!

[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:



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.



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.

[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).




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)