[HN Gopher] Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
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Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
Author : surprisetalk
Score : 295 points
Date : 2026-02-06 14:49 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (eukaryotewritesblog.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (eukaryotewritesblog.com)
| slillibri wrote:
| The main lesson I learned was I didn't have to live in a snowy
| place. I left SW Michigan in 2000 and haven't looked back. I
| don't like being cold, but I loathe snow and ice.
| richiezc wrote:
| +1 I grew up in CA, went to college in IL and couldn't move
| back fast enough!
| mattikl wrote:
| I've lived all my life in Finland, even though all through my
| early adulthood I was planning to move to some place much
| warmer. But later (especially now with children for whom the
| snow is so exciting) I've come to like the four seasons and the
| balance it gives.
|
| That article was a strange read from my perspective, because
| here the infrastructure is built for winters as well. I don't
| remember school ever being canceled due to winter conditions,
| traffic is only a mess after a snowstorm.
| euroderf wrote:
| Yes but then in spring come the freeze-thaw cycles that make
| every town a skating rink. Sand & grit barely rate as halfway
| measures. More-aggressive snow removal and pavement scraping
| would help.
|
| I've been obsessed longtime about how (or, better: whether)
| robots could remove the ice from pavements, but I only see
| tech challenge after tech challenge.
| indoordin0saur wrote:
| > That article was a strange read from my perspective,
| because here the infrastructure is built for winters as well.
| I don't remember school ever being canceled due to winter
| conditions, traffic is only a mess after a snowstorm.
|
| Seems like the author lives in a rural area where there isn't
| the support to deal with heavy snow. Also, Finland has
| frequent snow that falls in small amounts. I'm not sure
| exactly where the author is, but some mountainous or lake-
| adjacent areas in the US and Canada the snow falls less
| frequently but when it does it can come very heavy, like a
| meter of the stuff in 48 hours is not uncommon which is more
| than Helsinki usually gets in an entire winter. In Buffalo,
| NY for example a few years back they got _2 meters_ in a
| single day.
| ozim wrote:
| I hate bugs, I specifically like late autumn/winter/early
| spring cold times because there are almost no bugs. I don't
| mind snow/ice as much.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Cold and dry is not a problem. You can always add more layers
| of clothing and get very comfortable.
|
| Warm and humid is a real problem. You can't just remove
| clothing until you're comfortable. And the humidity.. there's
| no remedy to fix that.
| wellf wrote:
| The remedy is swim or air conditioning.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Swimming (where, by the way?) or air conditioning isn't
| helping when walking outside.
| wellf wrote:
| Yeah it is basically don't walk outside much when above
| 35C. Unless you are a weird person with a body that can
| handle _a 10km run_ in such conditions! Not me.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| I'd rather just not live somewhere hot and humid.
| wffurr wrote:
| Just before the Superbowl, the Boston Globe had an article full
| of interviews with New Englanders who have moved to California.
| One claimed to still be a New Englander but didn't miss the
| weather, "I haven't slipped on ice in 30 years". I had to
| think, are they really New Englanders if they can't handle the
| weather? I think that's a big part of it. Having some Patriots
| and Dunkin Donuts swag doesn't cut it IMO.
| N_Lens wrote:
| I think this trend of writing in the second person needs to
| mature into a more accurate first person account. It's an
| immature human tendency to universalise one's experience, and it
| takes maturity to see that situations are different from context
| to context. A lot of this article doesn't seem to generalize to
| every snowy place on the planet.
| brettgriffin wrote:
| Put winter tires on your vehicles. I'm surprised by the number of
| people who tool around in snow and ice in 'all season' tires.
|
| Also, that writing tone is obnoxious.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Eh, all seasons do you just fine. Not worth the effort to put
| winter tires on, imo.
| antupis wrote:
| Difference is pretty big if it's icy like breaking 100 meters
| vs 10 meters. Especially if there's wildlife like
| reindeers/moose's you are going to do emergency breathing
| semi regularly.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| If it's icy there's no difference at all. The only tyres
| that do anything on ice are the ones with spikes or chains.
|
| If it's snowy a good modern all weather tyre can hold its
| own, but will brake a few feet later than a good winter
| tyre.
|
| In all other conditions a good all weather is a lot better
| than winter tyres, and pretty close to a good summer tyre.
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| You must live in Florida or be a terrible driver. The
| difference between winter and all seasons is very
| apparent.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| It is.
|
| However the difference between winter and a modern all
| weather (it's a different class) isn't.
|
| And yes, we're probably terrible drivers.
|
| I do not live in Florida. 45N, continental winters.
|
| I'm never using winter tyres again unless society breaks
| down and no one shovels the roads anymore.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| There are laws of physics you can't hand waive away.
| Winter tires are really more cold temp tires. The rubber
| formulation is different to allow for grip in the cold
| and dry (tread pattern for cold and snow). As such a
| winter tire wears heavily driven in the summer, rubber
| formulation is just too soft.
|
| For an all season that level of summer wear would be
| unacceptable. So a different formulation is used to
| improve summer wear at the cost of the winter low temp
| performance. You can't have it both ways, a long wearing
| summer performance and good sub 40 degree grip.
| literalAardvark wrote:
| Please read the studies in this thread.
|
| Modern high quality all weather tyres are excellent in
| summer and winter.
|
| Except on actual snow, where they're just ok, because of
| the hybrid sipe patterns, and ice, where they suck
| exactly as much as everything else except studded tyres
| (which suck on tarmac instead).
| ThrowawayTestr wrote:
| Even after the streets are plowed there's still a bit of
| snow on the main roads and a lot on the side roads. Maybe
| you live in a place with really mild winters, but my car
| would have drifted into a ditch many times this winter if
| I didn't swap my tires.
| Slothrop99 wrote:
| Just pointing out - a lot of snowy areas are very
| aggressive about plowing (and salting). For most people
| this is probably like "don't drive tomorrow" and not some
| need for knobby snow tires.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| Even when the road is dry the rubber compound is a lot
| softer on winter tires so you get significantly more grip
| than all season or summer in cold temps when they get
| hard.
| nucleardog wrote:
| I... Well, I had started explaining point by point how
| wrong this is but frankly the answer is just "all of it,
| very".
|
| I've driven summer tires, all season tires, winter tires,
| and studded winter tires in every season in Canada. (Yes,
| I live in Canada and own borderline-usless summer-only
| tires. Yes, I've tried driving them in snow.)
|
| None of what you're saying lines up with my own
| experience, various YouTube videos on braking distances,
| or literally anything else I've ever seen anywhere.
|
| Edit: And, well, to be clear... I've lived on the West
| coast of Canada where it's a bit more mild but you're in
| the mountains, in the middle where it hits -50, and in
| the East where it only hits -30 but snows like hell.
| kalleboo wrote:
| There are also actual studies that show the difference ht
| tps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-66968-2
| _...
| literalAardvark wrote:
| Yes, there are. And they show that it's a trade-off well
| worth investigating. Do you really want 10% better
| performance on snow at the cost of 10% worse performance
| on tarmac?
|
| How much do you drive on snow anyway? Probably nowhere
| near as long as you do on tarmac, even in a tough winter.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| You're right usually (about not needing blizzaks) but there's
| important nuance here. There are warm all season (with usual
| M+S stamped on, this just means tread pattern, nothing about
| compound) and winter all-season with a compatible compound
| for cold conditions. The industry created a logo for the
| tires some years back it's like 3 peak mountain snowflake or
| something. This ensures the compound is soft enough to keep
| gripping in freezing temperatures. It's required in some
| jurisdictions (Quebec I think and maybe some lake effect
| zones)
| Ekaros wrote:
| There is lot of variation between tires. From summer, to
| all season, to European winter to Nordic winter(studdles or
| studded). Only Nordic ones designed specifically for snow
| and ice are really usable in conditions where there is
| often snow and ice. They fare worse in wet not freezing
| conditions and ofc in dry.
|
| But not all winter tires are made equivalent.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Following an ambulance a couple years back I was up to
| 110 mph on my rather aggressive snow tires and was just
| fine. Not to say it wasn't a little worse, but I was
| fine. Everything you're saying is an exaggeration. A
| whole lot of people in snowy areas don't drive with snow
| tires and are usually fine. Good snow tires are a bit of
| a superpower up north but we all learn how to drive
| without them being a requirement outside of times where
| traveling at all is questionable.
| fifilura wrote:
| I only trust studded tiers (but i live close to a non-
| paved road that is always very icy during the end of the
| season).
|
| But that said - there are lots of research that points
| towards that studded tires kill more people than they
| save lives because of the asphalt particles they cause.
|
| But then there are people that claim that non-studded
| cars rely on at least 10% cars with studded tires to make
| the surface more rugged/rough.
|
| Anyway, down the rabbit hole.
| qixv wrote:
| I find it quite funny. I read it as if he is obnoxious towards
| himself, because the lessons presented are learned the hard
| way.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I'm in the foothills in Northern California, and I've never met
| anyone here that changes their ties out for winter. When
| there's chain controls, they'll let you through if you have
| winter rated tires, including all-season, _and_ all-wheel
| drive, otherwise you need chains.
|
| Everyone I know who drives a lot in the snow gets a vehicle
| with all-wheel drive and everyone else carries chains. (really
| they're cables, on a small vehicle)
|
| The difference between what winter-only tires can handle vs
| winter-rated all-season tires is so minimal that they're not
| with getting. Chance ate conditions are either fine for the
| all-season tie or there so bad that the difference is
| inconsequential and you need all-wheel drive or chains.
|
| I've only heard of people changing their tires on the Midwest,
| where snowfalls are in the inches, not feet.
| brabel wrote:
| Interesting, here in Sweden it's mandatory to change tires.
| Once I did it a bit late and drove on some ice, just a
| little. The car was like on ice skates for a little while .
| matttproud wrote:
| Driving discipline, culture, and rules in North America are
| Mickey Mouse.
|
| The reality of car dependency there means that there are
| people driving and owning cars who can't really afford to
| do it properly, nor do they know they need to do it
| properly (e.g., having a second set of tires for the
| winter). You can see this evidenced by the rust buckets on
| the road that look like they are one pothole away from
| losing part of the vehicle body. Deferred maintenance and
| investment everywhere and in everything ...
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| The United States also covers a vast difference in
| climate. What good are snow tires for people in South
| Florida, or Texas, or New Mexico? Where I live I switch
| between summer and all season cause we get enough snow to
| justify snow tires once a decade for a couple of days.
| This year has been the worse with two weekends with a
| decent amount of snow that was cleaned off the roads by
| Tuesday.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I wonder if it's a carryover of an old regulation that used
| to make sense. Modern all-season tires are better in snow
| than the best winter tires were several decades ago.
|
| Also, you need studs or chains to get traction on ice. The
| difference between a winter tire and a summer tire is the
| temperature range where the rubber stays flexible. When the
| rubber gets hard, it will keep its shape instead of
| complying with the surface of the road, so it loses
| traction quicker. Ice is flat, so there's no difference
| between tire types, and there's nothing to grip on to.
| kalleboo wrote:
| Nordic studless winter tires (different from Central
| European winter tires so also probably different from
| whatever you get in the US) do give some grip on ice,
| while all-seasons can be nearly as bad as summer tires. h
| ttps://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-66968-
| 2_...
|
| The government has done ongoing research on these
| subjects and the regulations do get renewed (e.g. some
| properly rated all-seasons are now allowed)
| matttproud wrote:
| Piggdekk in Norway are equivalent to North American
| studded tires. When I lived in the northern parts of the
| U.S., I had a set of these for times around freezing
| rains.
|
| Beyond the questions of winter weather properties, there
| are adjacent tradeoffs between the tire types (outside of
| studded):
|
| 1. Fuel economy
|
| 2. Noise
|
| 3. Degree of particulate pollution emission
|
| I'm sure that the all-season tires probably have some
| negative tradeoffs in these regards to, which yields a
| choose the most optimal product for the time of year.
| All-season tires to me seem like a convenience food for
| places where the weather can be legitimately bad.
|
| One other difference that is hard to articulate to North
| American drivers with respect to understanding
| Scandinavia and roads: there are places where snow and
| ice will literally not be removed (maybe not even
| removeable) from the road when plowed (I presume until
| spring melt). It just becomes a thick ice pack over the
| course of weeks. I never encountered any roads in my life
| (including Northern Minnesota) that were this inclement.
| North American roads tend to be cleared (plowing or
| melting) to asphalt or pavement.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| All-season tires aren't simply a matter of convenience,
| they offer a safety benefit. If you aren't driving at
| normal highway speeds, even if it's the dead of winter
| and the air is below freezing, your tires will heat up
| and the winter tires won't have as much traction. The
| disadvantage on dry roads can be several times what the
| advantage was on contaminated roads, including during the
| winter.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I've also seen snow tires perform worse than all-season
| tires, e.g: https://www.tyrereviews.com/Tyre/Michelin/Cro
| ssClimate-2.htm vs
| https://www.tyrereviews.com/Tyre/Barum/Polaris-5.htm
|
| If tires complying with the standards overlap, then the
| standards are meaningless. When there's requirements for
| snow tires, but not for X brand or model of snow tire,
| than it's not doing any good. That's why it's important
| to have a snow rating that can apply to tires of any
| type, and if it meets that rating, regardless of the
| rating for dry warm weather, than it should be good to
| go, otherwise not.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Indeed. The first thing I do when buying a second-hand car
| (I never buy new cars, what a waste of money) is to buy the
| best winter tires (and summer tires if needed) that money
| can buy (lots of that available, as I save so much on the
| car). I never have any problems in any conditions (and
| there are a lot of "conditions..")
|
| All seasons tires are rubbish. Also the "new" ones (re
| sister comment).
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| That hasn't been true for a very long time.
| tristor wrote:
| It actually still is true. I drive on all-season touring
| tires on my current vehicle because I drive across varied
| climates, but never in real winter conditions, that said
| true summer tires have much better stopping distance,
| better rain/wet handling, and massively better dry
| handling characteristics than all-season tires, and true
| winter tires have much better everything than all-seasons
| in snow and especially in ice.
|
| All-season tires have massively improved, but /so have
| summer and winter tires/. So sure, your all-seasons today
| may be superior to very old standards for prior
| generations of tires, but you are still the absolute
| safest when you have appropriate tires on your vehicle.
| Tires are fundamentally all that holds your vehicle to
| the ground.
|
| Also as much as I love AWD, it does basically fuck-all to
| help in winter conditions. The thing you need to worry
| about is /stopping/ not necessarily getting going again,
| and in both cases a FWD car with winter tires is worlds
| better than any AWD car on all-seasons. I swap to winter
| tires on my AWD cars when I spend significant time in
| areas where it snows (e.g. when I lived for several years
| in Colorado). It doesn't matter how many wheels are used
| to drive, all vehicles use all 4 wheels to stop, but if
| you have no traction you are fucked. Anyone telling you
| otherwise is ill-informed.
| dboreham wrote:
| Montana here. Everyone that can afford to changes their
| tires. Costco tire center is a s.show in November and May.
| Nobody uses chains except for un-maintained roads. Obviously
| nobody buys a 2WD vehicle here.
| jjav wrote:
| > The difference between what winter-only tires can handle vs
| winter-rated all-season tires is so minimal that they're not
| with getting.
|
| Yeah.. no. The difference is night and day.
|
| Put on some Nokian Hakkapeliitta tires and prepare to be
| amazed. The grip on snow is spectacular.
|
| All the years I lived in snow areas I drove a Miata of all
| things.. RWD, light, no ABS, no TC, 4" clearance. But with
| Hakkapeliitta tires I never once had any trouble, while
| people in their trucks and 4x4s were stuck on the side of the
| road due to all-season tires. A true snow tire is a whole
| different level.
|
| > Northern California ... chain controls
|
| The whole California chain thing is brain damage. The proper
| safe answer to driving in snow is top quality snow tires, not
| chains. Chains is the worst possible idea. The chain laws are
| laws created by politicians who live in sunny Sacramento and
| have never seen snow and have no clue.
|
| A car with Hakkapeliittas (Blizzaks are good too) will
| outhandle a car with chains 100% of the time.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| The difference between two-wheel and all-wheel drive is
| night and day, compared to the difference between winter
| and summer tires. Even then, it all goes out the door when
| conditions get icy and the only option is studs or chains,
| to get any traction.
|
| Chain controls, and really all winter regulations, like
| snow load factors in buildings and whatnot, are created
| locally, not by the state. Most politicians are from
| Southern California, and all the state cares about is air
| condition efficiency and water usage, as though everyone
| lives in the desert.
| jjav wrote:
| > The difference between two-wheel and all-wheel drive is
| night and day, compared to the difference between winter
| and summer tires.
|
| No, this is incorrect. Just try it.
|
| Summer tires are hopeless in freezing temperatures (and
| are not rated by the manufacturer to be used in such
| cold), as they become rock hard. As much grip as plastic
| kids big wheel tires.
|
| Ultimately, what you need the most, is grip. You could
| have an 8-wheel drive vehicle but if the tires have no
| grip it will just spin in place.
|
| In the snow by far the biggest advantage comes from true
| snow tires (not M+S or all season) due to how much grip
| they'll provide.
|
| A 4x4 is an additional advantage, of course. A 4x4 on
| snow tires will do better than a 2-wheel drive with snow
| tires. But a 2-wheel drive on snow tires is infinitely
| better than a 4x4 on summer tires because if there is no
| grip, there's no grip.
|
| If you are driving on pure ice then yes, chains or better
| yet, studs, are the way to go. That is a very rare
| scenario.
|
| > Chain controls, and really all winter regulations, like
| snow load factors in buildings and whatnot, are created
| locally, not by the state.
|
| No, these are state-wide Caltrans rules.
| philistine wrote:
| You're dangerously wrong. Winter tires make a very large
| difference in braking. If they're so inconsequential, why are
| they mandatory in many northern places?
|
| Culture has an impact on what people choose to do. I've seen
| so many Americans with your point of view. It's maddening.
| Winter tires save lives!
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| All-season tires are not winter rated. They are 3.5 season at
| best. True winter usage only exists in all-weather or snow
| tires with the 3PMS symbols.
| wffurr wrote:
| I have some 3PMS all season tires: Michelin Crossclimate 2.
| So far seem to be doing well on my FWD Chevy Bolt EV. I
| live in Boston though and we don't often get enough snow to
| really need snow tires. Also I usually ride my bike when
| it's snowy instead of driving.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| It depends. I use All Seasons in winter and have for over
| 40 years without issue because 9 years out of ten winter
| weather means 0.25" of snow one night during winter. The
| tenth year we might have three inches over a couple of
| days.
| kyralis wrote:
| As others have said, this is very wrong. I live in Vermont an
| Duse "all season" tires as my summer tires on both my Subaru
| and my 4wd truck. I absolutely change to winter tires on both
| vehicles (studded, on the truck), and the difference in snowy
| conditions is night and day.
| rypskar wrote:
| All-wheel drive doesn't help you at all where it is most
| important, and that is in braking. Having all-wheel drive
| only helps you get up to a dangerous speed faster when the
| grip is low
| newsclues wrote:
| No, the rubber compound in winter tires are vastly superior
| to all seasons on snow/ice, it helps you actually control the
| vehicle.
|
| I've shoveled meters of snowfall this year, our roads are
| just packed down snow, no pavement.
| triceratops wrote:
| https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2014/12/01/all-wheel-
| drive-d...
|
| FTA:
|
| "If anyone gets an AWD vehicle "for safety" but uses it with
| all-season tires, they have performed a Consumer Sucka Fail.
| A front wheel drive vehicle with snow tires would have more
| grip.
|
| According to this Consumer Reports test
| (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iXjzYbpt9Ow) on snow tires
| vs. AWD, the tires were by far the most important factor. And
| only 12% of AWD vehicle owners bothered to put snow tires on
| their vehicle, meaning 88% of all-wheel-drive vehicle
| purchases were wasted, because the drivers could have
| achieved better performance at lower cost in a front-wheeler
| with snow tires."
| rconti wrote:
| > The difference between what winter-only tires can handle vs
| winter-rated all-season tires is so minimal that they're not
| with getting. Chance ate conditions are either fine for the
| all-season tie or there so bad that the difference is
| inconsequential and you need all-wheel drive or chains.
|
| You couldn't be more wrong.
| bombcar wrote:
| The big difference is that snow tires are self cleaning;
| everything else ends up being ice covered slicks after a
| bit of driving.
| esmIII wrote:
| I went to school at Michigan Tech where we would regularly
| get over 300 inches in the winter. I drove a Honda civic with
| snow tires. It was fine even on steep slopes. Winter tires
| keep you from loosing traction and sliding off the road. AWD
| helps you get back on the road after you slide off.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| The writing tone is obviously self-deprecating.
| xxs wrote:
| Around this parts of Europe, they are mandatory.
| fulafel wrote:
| A lot of this seems to deal with unreliable electricity
| infrastructure and effects thereof. Is it just normal in the US
| and people in warmer places don't mind so much, or does it
| somehow correlate with snow?
| yxhuvud wrote:
| Trees fall down due to combination of heavy snow and wind. They
| probably don't cut sufficiently around power lines. It is extra
| bad if the ground hasn't frozen properly yet.
|
| In some places it may be cheaper to dig down the cable than
| facing storms.
| ndndndndj wrote:
| But why are power lines above ground in the first place?
| joecool1029 wrote:
| cost, it's way more expensive to dig. more red tape.
| bob1029 wrote:
| Makes them a lot easier to get to. Buried infrastructure is
| fantastic until it breaks. Then it really sucks ass.
|
| A lineman can fix anything on a pole within a few hours.
| Probably before lunch if they start first thing in the AM.
| Fixing a buried line can take days or worse depending on
| what's above it.
| Marsymars wrote:
| > Buried infrastructure is fantastic until it breaks.
| Then it really sucks ass.
|
| Or if you want to upgrade it. My local electricity
| provider charges an order of magnitude more for upgrading
| home electrical service for more amperage if your service
| line is buried.
| Slothrop99 wrote:
| Just to add, a lot of the midwestern USA is very swampy.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| When you build a home in the middle of nowhere, you
| actually have to pay for the power line to be run out to
| you. Burying utilities is tremendously expensive if you are
| footing the bill on your own.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| I don't have enough data to generalize across the US, but I
| grew up in a cold, snowy state (Wisconsin) and we almost never
| lost power. It happened, but it was pretty rare. We did have a
| generator for such instances, but that was because we had a
| dairy farm and the cooling unit for the milk tank needed to be
| kept running even if utility power was down.
| pests wrote:
| Snow and ice builds up on overhead powerlines. It can cause
| issues. States with tornados or hurricanes are more likely to
| build underground which avoids this. My location in SE Michigan
| is all overhead and, while we rarely lose power, I see tons of
| issues every ice storm that some unlucky few suffer through.
|
| I live very near a hospital and suspect I branch off their
| higher-SLA lines so that may be a factor.
|
| Warmer places that don't experience cold much absolutely suffer
| during a cold spell. Texas (with its independent grid) has been
| absolutely wrecked every time it gets too cold.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > I live very near a hospital
|
| Yeah, you won't lose power much. That's prioritized.
|
| I don't get as many power outages in the winter as I do in
| the warmer months (in fall it's not unusual to have some
| weeks without grid power). I did however get a freak outage
| before the last round of storms and cold. The overhead lines
| coming up the mountain to me have wetlands at the bottom, it
| appears a sudden extreme drop in temperature caused the wires
| to contract and tilted a pole enough (before ground could
| refreeze) to disconnect the lines. This is in NJ.
| JCP&L/firstenergy utility just does a shit job here.
| friendzis wrote:
| I live on the metric side of the Atlantic. Winter means extra
| tension on wires, extra load on trees leading to higher risk of
| air lines broken. At the same time you have decreased number of
| man-hours in a day, decreased efficiency in those hours and
| difficulty reaching points of failure physically. This leads to
| high stress on maintenance in an event of a snowstorm.
| Depending how inclined your country is to vote for the MBA-
| style policies, there are chances your maintenance crews are
| already at near-capacity and therefore such an "adversary"
| event can easily lead to some a bit more remote areas left
| without electricity for a week at -20degC. Having A+++ house
| with photovoltaic cells will not help in that case.
| curation wrote:
| I grew up in Canadian snowbelt (Great Lakes) and never lost
| power. If there is an ice storm - then we all freak out. I'm
| not saying it can't happen if a lot of snow falls and then
| there is wind but we lose power in summer more often from
| squirrels trying to nest in transformers. The biggest blackout
| I experienced was in Toronto in a summer heatwave.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Rural areas are much more common in the US than in other
| countries and much more likely to lose power in a storm, due to
| the long lengths of power line needed and the lack of
| redundancy from being too sparse to have multiple feed-ins to
| the local substation.
|
| It's not the cold that knocks out power, it's the wet and
| saturated ground and high winds knocking trees into the power
| lines.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I live in literally the middle of nowhere and get very bad
| winters but I lose power less often than I ever did living in
| the center of Chicago which often lost power for days at a
| time due to the weather.
| pettertb wrote:
| If you can't drive anywhere, chances are the people who fix
| electricity grids will struggle too. And snow storms can fuck
| with infrastructure..
|
| Less of an issue in areas where people do get around no matter
| the snowfall tho.
| bregma wrote:
| I live in the back woods of Canada. We get a lot of snow. Our
| electrical supply (we call it "hydro") can disappear for long
| periods of time. The usual suspects are:
|
| 1. Ice storms. 3 inches (8 cm) of ice build up on trees can
| cause them to either drop limbs or deadfall into wires. It can
| be spectacular to see. Sparky.
|
| 2. The first heavy snowfall of the year can cause problems
| because although trees are trimmed every few years, they can
| grow pretty fast and either arch over the wires or are now tall
| enough to deadfall on the wires. By the time the later heavy
| snowfalls have come the danger trees have already dangered. The
| worst trees for this are the pines and spruces (and hemlocks
| and cedars but don't tend to grow as tall) since their boughs
| catch the snow and their new wood is actually pretty weak.
|
| 3. Drivers losing control. Doing 20 over the posted limit and
| passing a plow while the roads are greasy and visibility poor
| often results in taking out one or more poles while converting
| yourself into a casualty.
|
| One large factor here is not that it takes a crew long to
| restore the lines, it's that the problems tend to occur in many
| sports over a large geographic region. There are only so many
| crews on shift and more remote places can be forced to wait for
| days while the townies get services right away. Our power was
| off one spring for three weeks a few years back after a derecho
| passed through a strip about 100 miles long by 20 miles wide.
| I'm still burning the wood for heat.
|
| So, yeah, it's normal. Doesn't matter how good your make your
| infrastructure, nature is harsher.
| yxhuvud wrote:
| 8: that's why you have sharper slopes on the roof if you expect a
| lot of snow. Then it glide off.
|
| We have to get our city house roof shoveled, but it is more
| making certain it don't fall on top of someone.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| It can also be structural. Depending on the elevation, my
| county mandates houses be designed to survive wind speeds up to
| 157 miles per hour and snow loads up to 545 pounds per square
| foot. That means a flat roof would have to be built like a
| parking garage floor, but a sloped roof can transfer that
| weight to the exterior walls, and an true A-frame directly
| transfers the load to the ground.
| jmspring wrote:
| I spent 7 years living in an area with 1m acre fires, winters
| that were 4 feet in april and nothing in december. Having a house
| setup where you have multiple heat sources - important. My
| fireplace had a fan and my kerosene heater was pretty low
| maintenance as well - a honda 2200 generator under the eaves -
| only needed once.
|
| UPSs for power outages.
|
| Chest freezer - put those 1 gallon crystal springs (if in western
| us) jugs in to have ice blocks.
|
| Have warm clothing. If you live in an HOA, be on top of them
| plowing both common areas and walk ways (mine was supposed to,
| FedEx/UPS/DHL all let me know - the walkway couldn't be an ice
| sheet).
|
| Ensure you have access to a vehicle to get your to the services
| you need.
| jmspring wrote:
| I hated the reference to burning man. Most burning man people I
| have dealt with don't plan long term (aside from the event) and
| the long term planning they do have - isn't usually at their
| home.
| jmspring wrote:
| For context, I was born/raised SF Bay Area. Moved to Plumas
| County (north of Truckee) in 2017 for about 8 years. Didn't
| mind the snow - have a tacoma trd off road. The electric coop
| was amazeballs even when PGE tried to screw with them. I've
| since moved. I _like_ rural - but the wild fires and trumptopia
| kinda soured me.
|
| I live on an island now with a driveway that has 15-20 degree
| slope. It snows rarely, but garage is insulated and I need to
| get a heater near the water pipes. It snowed the one day I had
| to get to the ferry at 650am for jury duty. I'm glad I had the
| TRD - it wasn't much but waking up to - doo-dee-doo - drive to
| ferry and unexpected 2" of snow...causes some anxeity.
| hysan wrote:
| Something about the tone of the article just makes me want to
| write a retort / criticism instead of praising the advice. Maybe
| it's because it feels like an incomplete list or that it's too
| generalized but written like the author has learned it all. For
| example, no mention of learning when and what to do to avoid
| frozen pipes. Or how to fix things when it happens. Also,
| shoveling snow isn't that hard if you have the right snow
| shoveling equipment and know a bit of physics (which in my
| experience, locals will gladly teach you).
| vl wrote:
| I actually enjoyed the writing. It's clearly reflection on the
| experience presented as an "advice list" somewhat jokingly.
| Since author didn't enjoy the experience, tone is somber. After
| spending childhood in the cold place I can relate.
| fwipsy wrote:
| It's not really meant to be advice. It's the author's own
| experience, ironically written as if it were advice.
|
| For example:
|
| "You did bleach ten gallons of well water for long-term storage
| already earlier in the year, right? Good."
|
| This is sarcasm, because the author did not do that.
| hysan wrote:
| Ah I see. That didn't translate well for me. Maybe because
| the title primed me into thinking that this was meant to be
| helpful.
| xxs wrote:
| It's obviously a self-depreciation/joke style.
|
| There is some truth in it [that doesn't translate well over
| to some other part of the works]. It requires rather poor
| infrastructure to be present.
|
| There has been snow for over 2 months here, with relatively
| low lows (-29C) but no issue like lack of electricity or
| water.
| fwipsy wrote:
| That's fine, humor is subjective. I had a similar
| experience watching the "manchild" music video recently. I
| knew it wasn't serious, but I was still annoyed until I
| thought it through and understood the satire.
| dboreham wrote:
| Perhaps it's an AI generated article. A real human would have
| realized quite quickly that you can put snow into the tank of
| a toilet when the power is out.
| Tor3 wrote:
| This is about _tankless_ toilets. They only work with
| electricity-powered flush pumps. That's why the author
| wrote about having to physically dump water into the toilet
| to flush it.
|
| For our new home we're making we have two toilets (always
| practical). One of them is tankless, but we made sure the
| second one is a traditional cistern toilet with no
| electrical requirements. Just in case.
| bradfa wrote:
| Most well pumps are electric powered. The holding tank
| will give you a very small amount of water that's in it
| if it's up high but after that without electricity it
| won't refill.
|
| In the USA most residential toilets are tank type and
| don't directly use electricity.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| This is a common reaction to posts on the internet, including
| blogs and Hacker News comments.
| qingcharles wrote:
| I just learned first hand what to do with frozen pipes.
| Couldn't stop it this year as it went so far below zero. On the
| last day before it warmed up one of the pipes split and put
| about 2ft of water into the basement. Amazing to see the damage
| to the CPVC pipe that broke -- like it literally exploded,
| which it probably did.
| codingdave wrote:
| You should have a shutoff valve on every pipe that goes
| through an external wall. Before bitter cold like that, turn
| off the valve and drain that pipe. If it is supplying an
| outdoor spigot, that shutoff should just be part of your
| winter prep.
|
| (And yes - I, too, learned that the hard way.)
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| The entire article is half-assed assumptions mixed with common
| sense. The only lesson is to prepare before the snow season
| arrives or suffer.
| computerdork wrote:
| Moved a year ago from California to northern Michigan. To add to
| this list, specifically regarding "Do NOT get wet and cold":
|
| o If you're walking out in the cold, have many different ways to
| keep your feet and your hands warm, because usually, you'll have
| a good-enough coat and winter-pants that'll keep your core
| relatively warm, but it's the very ends of your extremities that
| get cold (just got a small amount of frost bite on my toes the
| other day).
|
| o On top of really thick gloves and socks, can buy some battery-
| heated versions of both. These aren't just gimmicks, they work
| wonders! As do the standard handwarmers and toewarmers
|
| o Get real winter boots, these are water proof and insulated, so
| your feet won't get wet, and will resist the cold for longer
| (didn't learn this one until recently. Yeah, once your shoes get
| wet enough to bleed into your socks, you feet start to freeze).
|
| o For your head and neck, carry one of those head and neck covers
| with you in your coat pocket (called a balaclava). Because
| sometimes you misread the weather and suddenly you've got a 5
| degree wind chill streaming over your neck and face.
|
| o etc:)
|
| And, actually, walking in the snow is really nice (so clean and
| pure), which is why a lot of us here do actually go outside.
| oldestofsports wrote:
| This guy has mastered the art of dressing for winter
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG3WfCWU9D0
| internet_points wrote:
| > battery-heated versions
|
| all the ones I've seen when researching were lithium-ion from
| sketchy-looking brands, any brands you recommend?
| bradfa wrote:
| Any sold at a physical ski shop. You will make a face at the
| price. You will reconsider the sketchy ones for their price.
| But the ski shop ones will last significantly longer.
| degosuke wrote:
| Any recommendations about the boots? Or what to check for?
| cess11 wrote:
| I prefer military boots, they have no branding and are
| typically designed and tested for decent longevity and
| comfort. My current ones are Bundeswehr surplus, I believe
| Meindl produced them. They cost about 60 euros or so, never
| been used.
|
| Pick a size larger than you would usually do, unless they're
| explicitly designed as winter boots. In cold weather you'll
| want wool socks as well as regular socks and that requires
| some extra space.
| walletdrainer wrote:
| You can certainly get cheap Bundeswehr surplus boots, but
| you should know that soldiers don't typically choose those
| if given a choice.
|
| When given a choice, soldiers will tend to choose something
| like Salomon Toundra.
| cess11 wrote:
| Yeah, I know, I've been in the military, but my
| requirements are much simpler. I'm not going to walk
| fifty to seventy kilometers per day in them, and I also
| don't want to spend as much time taking care of my boots
| as they do. If I happen to walk through a bog too many
| and the stench gets permanent it feels better to get a
| replacement pair if they cost like 60 euros rather than
| 2-300.
| nxtbl wrote:
| There are many brands making proper shoes/boots for winter
| hiking. I would recommend taking a look at Haix, Lowa,
| Salomon Quest series, Lundhags and Meindl.
| joshvm wrote:
| Baffin make some of the best cold weather boots. We use them
| in Antarctica, though you probably don't want the chonky -70C
| rated ones. I have some lighter boots rated for about -40 and
| they're great. Really any good gore tex mid-ankle hiking boot
| is probably fine. Whether you need cold rated boots is going
| to depend on where you're walking.
|
| Your main concern is to stay dry and minimize snow incursion.
| Either wear ski pants that act as gaiters, use gaiters or use
| boots and socks that are high enough that you won't get snow
| down the sides.
|
| If you buy boots with insulation, try not to compress it.
| Otherwise be aware that if you don't keep moving, your boots
| will eventually cool to ambient and it's pretty hard to get
| that temperature back up.
|
| Check grip? Hard to test but warm doesn't necessarily mean
| any good on slick ice. Spikes work well if you're going on a
| hike and there's a lot of packed snow mixed with ice.
|
| Don't forget good socks. Doesn't need to be anything fancy,
| but wool is by far the best material (not necessarily merino
| as it tends to be too thin). You may need to size up because
| of the extra padding.
|
| Also luxury, but fan assisted boot drying/warming stations
| are great. They make quite a big difference if you go out a
| lot because moisture build-up takes ages to dry otherwise.
| balderdash wrote:
| The key word you're looking for is a "pac boot" depending on
| where you live you can get insulated, but honestly unless
| your live somewhere super cold and snowy, you probably don't
| need insulation. if you put on warm socks, keep snow out of
| them, are moving around, and aren't outside for hours on end
| you'll probably be fine even in really cold weather.
| SAI_Peregrinus wrote:
| Ryan Tilley (an AMGA-certified mountain guide) has a long and
| detailed guide of different sorts of boots and what to look
| for in each type[1].
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFKC0BynjxY
| nosrepa wrote:
| A buff works pretty well instead of a balaclava and can serve
| the same purpose and more. Essentially just a tube of stretchy
| fabric that you can wear around your neck and pull up into a
| close enough approximation of a balaclava.
| ghtbircshotbe wrote:
| Get boots a size too big to wear multiple layers of wool socks.
| mc_maurer wrote:
| A big thing I would add is to _strongly_ consider how much you
| 'll be moving, especially when it comes to footwear.
|
| Boots that are rated to -40 during light activity can leave you
| with cold toes if you're standing still in -10 for an hour.
|
| Activity levels also dictate how you layer and how easily you
| need to dump heat. If you're hiking, snowshoeing, XC skiing,
| you want some layers with zips so you can quickly let heat out.
| PyWoody wrote:
| Also remember to watch your sweat levels. As soon as you start
| sweating, start shedding layers to bring your core temp down.
| phil21 wrote:
| > thick gloves
|
| Gloves are not for severe cold. They are for dexterity during
| limited exposure time - as no gloves can keep your fingers warm
| for very long no matter how well-made they are.
|
| Look for mittens or "choppers" as we called them back in the
| day if you are going to be outside for a long period of time.
| These are outer shells (leather or gore-tex/etc.) with various
| types of removable liners. You basically layer your hands
| inside them. For folks outside all day you usually would have a
| few liners on hand to replace when they get wet.
|
| Add a heat pack (iron oxide) to these on those super cold days
| and you'll be pretty much set.
| yokoprime wrote:
| > In the first really heavy winter storm of the year, your power
| might go off. This is understandable
|
| Having lived in Norway most of my 40+ years on this earth, I can
| with some confidence say that this is not an universal truth. I
| don't think I've experienced any power interruption of over 1
| hour in winter ever, and it's been at least 5 years since the
| last time. Yes it snows here. A lot.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Those of us with above ground power lines especially not in
| cities experience power outages. Particularly when it's near
| freezing and there's significant ice accumulation.
| nxpnsv wrote:
| We have above ground power lines in the nordics too. They are
| just built to handle our climate.
| matttproud wrote:
| Yeah, it was interesting to see some above-ground-to-the-
| premises power delivery in some of the smaller Norwegian
| villages above the arctic circle. Things looked rather
| robust, though.
|
| I lived in the Oklahoma and in Minnesota, and the
| difference there is already stark:
|
| * OK suffered from plenty of storm-induced winter power
| outages (massive freezing rain cycles were common in my
| life). My mother's cotton bath robe, which she kept using
| until late in her life, had burn marks from when she
| reached for something over a lit candle during a power
| outage when I was four years old.
|
| * MN suffers some, but people knew to develop meaningful
| contingency plans.
|
| Both states have variegated buried-power-to-the-premises
| usage. It's not really to be expected as the norm in either
| place, but MN has far more than OK (funnily enough I grew
| up in a place in OK with it). Either way, the
| infrastructure robustness in North America looks like it
| arose from a dismal cost-benefit analysis versus a societal
| welfare consideration.
|
| I left North America about 14 years ago for Europe. The
| difference is stark. We've only had one significant power
| interruption in that time (not even in winter); whereas
| stochastic neighborhood outages were commonplace in North
| America. What really freaks me out about the situation in
| North America is just the poor insulation of the structures
| and their low thermal mass. They will get cold fast.
|
| Aside: A lot of friends and family in North America balked
| at the idea of getting a heat pump due to performance
| during a power outage: "when the power goes out, I can
| still run my gas." When I asked them whether the house was
| heated with forced air or used an electronic thermostatic
| switches, the snarky smile turned to a grimace.
|
| When you live in a cold place, you learn to do things
| differently. You're naive if you don't pack warm blankets
| and water in your vehicle, for instance. You never know
| when you might find yourself stranded somewhere due to
| vehicular breakdown ...
| kalleboo wrote:
| > _whereas stochastic neighborhood outages were
| commonplace in North America_
|
| I believe this has to do with the design of the North
| American split phase vs European three-phase grid. The
| European grid has more centralized, larger neighborhood
| step-down transformers, whereas the US has many more
| decentralized smaller pole-mounted transformers. NA
| proponents say any given outage will affect fewer people,
| EU proponents say it's easier to maintain fewer pieces of
| infrastructure.
|
| (That said I live in Japan where we have a US-style grid
| and have only had like 2, <5 min outages during typhoons
| and nothing else so maybe it's just the quality of the
| maintenance)
| a_better_world wrote:
| or might find SOMEONE ELSE stranded somewhere due to
| vehicular breakdown.
|
| yes, obviously "put on your own oxygen mask before
| helping others" (so you remain an asset instead of a
| liability), but please remember the "helping others" part
| (so you remain an asset instead of a liability).
| MaulingMonkey wrote:
| Where I live (pacific northwest), it's not snow that's the
| problem, but windstorms. Presumably knocking over trees,
| which in turn takes down power lines - which of course
| implies said trees are tall, in proximity to the power
| lines, and not cut down. I maybe average 24 hours of outage
| per year (frequently less, but occasionally spiking to a
| multi-day outage.)
|
| I don't think that's something that can be solved with just
| "build quality"... but it presumably _could_ be solved
| through "maintainence" (cutting down or trimming trees,
| although that requires identifying the problem,
| permissions, a willingness to have decreased tree coverage,
| etc.)
| fuzztester wrote:
| how?
| mzi wrote:
| In the Nordics it's very rare. There were power outages this
| year that lasted for more than 24h for some customers. So
| naturally there was a public inquiry into how the power
| companies let that happen.
| brabel wrote:
| In Sweden it also almost never happens but this year there
| was a hurricane like storm that fell lots of trees and
| thousands of people had no power for days. But yeah it
| wasn't because of snow.
| a96 wrote:
| Parts of Finland, too. Few people lost power for a long
| time. I didn't even notice. Depends on how many things
| break and where.
| phony-account wrote:
| > In Sweden it also almost never happens
|
| This just isn't true, at all - electricity is regularly
| out for hundreds or thousands of people in Sweden because
| of snow. This year was especially bad, where thousands
| were without any electricity for up to 10 or 12 days, but
| every year brings the same problems. Just google
| "elavbrott sno" and you'll find many current examples -
| just as one instance:
|
| https://www.horisontmagasin.se/2026/01/06/nya-elavbrott-
| nu-p...
| watwut wrote:
| That is bad infrastructure problem. Not a necessary feature.
| Near freezing should be non issue.
| LeafItAlone wrote:
| I lived in such a place and never had power outages. Mostly
| because the power company came through on a regular basis
| (two years or so) and chopped down and trees that could cause
| problems. Some areas definitely looked terrible from a beauty
| standpoint, but it meant keeping power.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| My parents have underground power lines, and they've lost
| power multiple times, from vulnerabilities in the
| infrastructure. The transformers are still above ground, in
| big green boxes, and occasionally someone will drive into one
| and knock out power. The substation is also above ground, and
| once they lost power because a mylar balloon landed in the
| substation and shorted some lines.
|
| They've also lost power from rolling blackouts due to not
| having enough power plants, but that's a California thing, at
| least compared to first-world countries. In a similar vein, a
| substation in the city my dad grew up in was once taken out
| by a sniper:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalf_sniper_attack
| benttoothpaste wrote:
| My neighborhood has underground power lines and we lose
| power every time there is a hurricane/tropical storm or
| even a major thunderstorm.
| phil21 wrote:
| Underground power lines are weirdly vulnerable to lightning
| strikes.
|
| I lived through two >24hr power outages at my previous
| place that had buried power lines into the subdivision.
| Both due to lightning strikes on trees that happened to be
| close to the buried lines. The lightning then fed into the
| line, and you could literally see black scorch marks on the
| lawn that followed the wiring until it eventually
| dissipated.
|
| This required digging up 30-40ft of melted wiring each time
| and re-running it. These appeared to be direct-burial
| cables fwiw.
|
| Talking to the utility guys, it was pretty common for this
| to be the failure mode. I found it pretty interesting and
| somewhat ironic.
| westpfelia wrote:
| Live in Nordland on a island. Lost power for about two and a
| half minutes on Christmas day. I dont even think anyone but me
| noticed since it was still early.
|
| Even when I was living in the snowier parts of America we didnt
| lose power. I would say losing power is not a universal truth
| in the slightest.
| fwsgonzo wrote:
| Same here, also on an island. We lost power for ~8 hours
| during a storm, however that is the longest I've ever
| experienced. I have this stone fireplace:
| https://www.norskkleber.no/ovner/marcello/ (Marcello 140),
| which kept my 75sqm living room heated through the whole
| thing.
|
| Since that storm, we have decided to buy a second fireplace
| for upstairs with a cooking top.
| wasmainiac wrote:
| Hey Vi burde alle chat litt. Vi bor jo alle litt i
| naerheten.
| cwillu wrote:
| Yeah, that's not a thing here in saskatchewan either.
| da_chicken wrote:
| I've lived in Michigan for about the same length of time, and
| even with the terrible service our current power companies are
| providing the only time I've lost power for more than a few
| minutes during the winter has been after an ice storm.
| coffeebeqn wrote:
| Article should be called Lessons you learn living in a place
| where it regularly snows but with terrible infrastructure and
| seemingly no societal preparedness for said regular snow
| throwaway290 wrote:
| Even in deep Russia I don't think "power goes out with first
| winter storm" is a thing. and I thought russian infra
| sucked...
|
| That said I remember power could go out from a lightning
| storm or without any reason. But pretty rarely
| ansgri wrote:
| Russian infra doesn't suck that much, I guess it was
| overbuilt in soviet times. Armenian, on the oner hand...
| But they're "societally prepared" in the sense that repairs
| are quick usually, and there are even some upgrades
| recently.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I had a Russian friend tell me that the Soviet mindset
| was to overbuild.
|
| He said they tended to build "two of everything," which
| is why there's so many sets of two.
|
| If one craps out, the second can be used in its place, or
| scavenged for parts.
| lisper wrote:
| I am in Honolulu right now and the power has gone out twice
| in the last three days because of high winds.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Or somewhere remote. Czechia is a small country with a well-
| developed grid and nothing here is really "remote" compared
| to, say, Alaska.
|
| But people still do have chalets/huts in the mountains, and
| the authorities won't spend money on burying 10 km of cables
| in complicated terrain just for a small hut colony or a
| solitary hut. Which means that the cables go through the air,
| which means that a fallen tree can sever them, and you won't
| be particularly prioritized. That said, people who actually
| live there or spend longer holidays there during winter
| months, tend to have enough firewood collected to survive
| such situations comfortably.
|
| It is a different story in cities/villages with compact house
| patterns. I don't think I ever saw a snow-related blackout in
| such a place. There, your worst risk is actually flooding.
| We've had some serious floods in the last decades, and even
| buried cables will get damaged and short-circuited in such an
| event. For example, the cable needs to cross a stream, so it
| is attached to a bridge, high water comes and tears down the
| entire bridge with the cable as well.
| throwaway173738 wrote:
| In other words most of the US outside of a major metro area.
| I've lived various places in Western Washington and the
| advice about generators and food and batteries and heat ring
| true everywhere more than an hour away from Seattle or Tacoma
|
| I would add that you should have a backup plan for preparing
| any holiday meal using a camping stove because the power
| could go out an hour into roasting a turkey. In fact don't
| invite anyone over unless you've confirmed ahead of time that
| they don't mind sleeping in the same room, together with your
| family, in front of the wood stove. This could happen even on
| a clear day. Don't rely on the electricity in the winter
| ever.
| caseysoftware wrote:
| > _In other words most of the US outside of a major metro
| area._
|
| Not just outside, I spent 15 years in/around Austin and it
| got to be ridiculous.
|
| 2020 - cleared out the stores at covid.. alright, few
| people were prepared, none had done it before
|
| 2021 - cleared out the stores for the blizzard, lost power
| for 45min and water for 5 days.. almost no one was
| prepared, despite the year before
|
| 2023 - cleared out the stores for the blizzard, lost power
| for days due to heavy icing.. some were prepared but not at
| scale
|
| Some people just don't learn.
|
| Luckily after '20, we prepared. Then in '21, we moved to
| rural Texas and got solar+battery backup so 2023 wasn't
| even a blip.
| toast0 wrote:
| > I've lived various places in Western Washington and the
| advice about generators and food and batteries and heat
| ring true everywhere more than an hour away from Seattle or
| Tacoma
|
| I live on the west side of puget sound, and get two nines
| of utility power. Undergrounding distribution lines is very
| expensive given the natural expenses of undergrounding and
| the shallow soil most of the region has. Undergrounding
| transmission lines is basically not happening outside of
| very special cases. Shallow soil also makes trees less
| stable, so that makes treefall -> utility outage more
| probable. Roads can get pretty nasty in winter storms too
| which also contributes to high time to repair.
|
| People can say "bad infrastructure" all you want, but
| nobody wants to pay a lot more to fight geography for one
| more nine. Also at least in my community, every tree is
| sacred even though it's all third growth backfill from
| multiple clear cuts over the past who knows.
|
| Article doesn't even mention cell towers go down in
| extended outages. Around me, it's about 4-6 hours, a little
| longer overnight, but only 30 minutes past when people wake
| up.
| bproctor wrote:
| I've lived 40+ years in several places in the northern US,
| mostly in rural areas and this isn't my experience at all.
| dboreham wrote:
| Even a backward country like the USA, our power has never gone
| out in the winter. Only in the summer due to lightning strikes.
| sgt wrote:
| A lot of people in Norway lose power though, once in a while.
| Depends where you are. Just a few months ago thousands of
| people outside of Bergen were without power.
| eitland wrote:
| It is really interesting for me to hear your experience.
|
| I have lived in Norway all of my >45 years on this earth and I
| can say that in the first half of my life were I lived on the
| west coast, power outages was totally expected.
|
| We had a generator, and we had a gas stove ("everyone" in
| Norway use electricity for cooking) for those days, a kerose
| lamp and a wood stove.
|
| The longest power outage I experienced was 3 days, somewhere
| around 1986 I think, but a few hours could happen multiple
| times and overnight outages were not unusual.
| b112 wrote:
| Likely city vs rural.
| doubled112 wrote:
| Parts of Ottawa, Canada were without power for 10+ days
| after a windstorm in 2022. Not rural, but the suburbs.
|
| > Ottawa Hydro restored power to just over half its
| customers after one week
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_2022_Canadian_derecho
|
| Fortunately, you can't freeze to death in May, and the
| roads are clear so you just go to where the power is.
| cess11 wrote:
| In large parts of the nordic countries we have either killed
| off all the trees or dug down the cables, making power
| interruptions uncommon except when someone with an excavator
| cuts a line by mistake or bad maintenance leads to a fire or
| short.
|
| In the population wise very small county here I live in Sweden
| we haven't come that far yet, so when the storms a while ago
| did their thing some people were without power for several
| days. Mine was out for some six hours or so. The forests around
| here look like "plukkepinn" and tore down many, many above
| ground power lines.
|
| When I grew up in the late eighties, early nineties further
| south we had interruptions at every other thunderstorm and most
| regular storms. This is one reason why we had a wood stove and
| self-circulation for heating rather than a heat pump. Around
| the turn of the millenium they buried the power lines and since
| then my family there see almost no interruptions.
| silcoon wrote:
| I lived in Australia in Far North Queensland until last year
| and power was running out every heavy rain. The point is that
| in that region there are only two seasons: a short dry season
| and a long wet one.
|
| So everyone expects multiple power off a year and every
| household has generators and stock of fuel and matches for
| emergency.
|
| Locals have a "it's gonna be fine" attitude against a poor (but
| expensive) infrastructure. I was really disappointed, growing
| up in Europe, where a power off it's extremely rare (even if we
| have rain and snow).
| rgmerk wrote:
| Worth keeping in mind that nobody freezes to death in FNQ if
| the power goes out.
| theothertimcook wrote:
| "she'll be right" =/= "it's gonna be fine"
|
| More of a it's not going to be fine but we will deal with it.
|
| 1000+KMs away in/not far from the capital city of Queensland
| it's not unheard of to have a multi-day power outage after a
| severe storm.
|
| Considering QLD is almost 6x the size of Norway it's not
| actually that bad.
| DrBazza wrote:
| We usually hear about the US and Canada losing power mostly due
| to freezing rain across a continent sized area as most of the
| power cables are on poles.
|
| How does that compare to Norway?
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| https://satwcomic.com/you-re-hot-then-you-re-cold
|
| Whatever weather people are used to will be handled seamlessly.
| If it's unusual, it will cause failures. Doesn't really matter
| what kind of weather it is.
|
| This is basically the Netflix Chaos Monkey theory of systems,
| applied to weather response.
|
| (A friend of mine lives in Shanghai. She's shocked whenever I
| mention a power failure; in her mind, a functioning country
| wouldn't have them at all.)
| BrtByte wrote:
| Snow isn't inherently the villain; mediocre infrastructure is
| emeril wrote:
| Norway is probably one of the better managed countries on earth
| wasmainiac wrote:
| I like it, but your statement is an generalisation.
| boringg wrote:
| This article is a bit painful to read. It should be lessons
| from living in the remote wildnerness in winter. Pretty much
| all those problems are relative to rural infrastructure and
| poor home building. If you live in an area with heavy snow load
| you want an A-frame roof to de-load the roof (for example see:
| Tahoe, CA ~ 500-800" snow a year).
| citrin_ru wrote:
| A-frame houses are not efficient in terms of space inside and
| thermal properties (both because of low volume to surface
| ratio). It's sufficient to have 40-45deg root pitch to avoid
| snow accumulation.
| boringg wrote:
| Depends what you are optimizing for -- roof collapse in a
| high snow load local or the level of efficiency for thermal
| properties. You can drive for high efficiency of your
| thermal properties but when your roof collapses those
| efficiencies are meaningless.
|
| Home design is a game of engineering tradeoffs with the
| occasional new technology to improve things or lower costs.
| UltraSane wrote:
| An A-frame is a overkill solution to snow load when you
| can just make a shallower roof stronger.
| pastage wrote:
| Tradition says that this is not true but honestly I have
| no real experience except I have done the calculation for
| our roof. According to our local building standards at
| 600 you basically have zero snow load, I am not sure what
| angle a shallow angle roof is but 300 is max load. 6kN/m2
| is a lot of extra strength.
| cheeseface wrote:
| In Finland, where you can easily get 30cm or more snow,
| all roofs are required to stand 100-300kg/m2 by law and
| most roofs are less than 30 degrees (e.g. 1:2 ratio).
|
| A-frame or even 45degree angle roofs are very rare.
| jaggederest wrote:
| 30cm is just kinda cute. Try 600cm - you'll find a lot of
| A-frames up the mountain, where they routinely get >700cm
| of snow each year and generally no thaw until spring.
| Alaska, similarly, but there you'll find more domes and
| steep-roofed chalets, since it gets proper cold (-40) and
| insulation uber alles is the rule.
|
| The other benefit of an A-frame is that the snow drifts
| deeply enough that winter-only cabins don't need as much
| insulation, because there's a 4m drift on all sides
| except the front.
|
| Those kinds of places are also where you find "doors to
| nowhere" on the 2nd floor, because that's the winter
| access. One door at ground level for summer, one door
| ~1.5-2m up for winter.
|
| I love visiting, but I'll never live there!
| jimnotgym wrote:
| I read this as in Finland you can get 30cm snow in a day.
| And the second person is comparing that to 600cm in a
| year. Am I right?
| jaggederest wrote:
| Total accumulation matters in roof design, not single-day
| dumps. The mountain I'm referring to (and others like it)
| can get 100cm+ single day, but that's not super common.
|
| Helsinki, for example, only gets a total of ~90cm a year.
| So the mountain sees more snow in a single event some
| years than Helsinki all year.
| jimnotgym wrote:
| Just looking at a map though, and Helsinki is on the
| south coast. It appears Finland extends right up to the
| Arctic circle. I would guess they get more snow up there?
| Any Finns like to chime in?
| jaggederest wrote:
| https://en.ilmatieteenlaitos.fi/snow-statistics
|
| Upwards of 80cm in finnish lapland, so quite a bit of
| snow, but not the ~2-3 meters common in the high sierras
| and cascades. This is mostly because the elevation is low
| and the sea exposure is smaller (wind blows from the
| pacific over the mountain and dumps snow). The Paradise
| Snowtel on Ranier, for example, routinely has 3-6 meters
| / 10-20 feet of snow in winter, and is one of the
| snowiest places on earth. The only place I'm aware of
| that has more is Aomori Prefecture in Japan and they have
| similar geography.
| UltraSane wrote:
| The only limit to how strong you can make a roof is
| really money. If you space joists or trusses half as far
| apart you will about double the max snow load.
| derefr wrote:
| At a certain point the problem stops being the roof, and
| starts being subsidence of the ground under the
| increasingly-heavy building.
| UltraSane wrote:
| That would be a LOT of snow.
| dathinab wrote:
| only to a limit
|
| enough snow, especially if compacted, especially if it
| involves melting + refreezing cycles turning part of it
| too ice and even robust concrete building can have some
| surprising issues
|
| but it's true that for what most places in the world need
| a slightly tilted and structural stable roof is good
| enough, if you know how to clean it if things to south
| UltraSane wrote:
| If you get that much snow you should build heating into
| the roof to melt the snow just enough to slide off
| derefr wrote:
| A-frames are often used in snowy climates as a vacation
| home, park ranger patrol station, or
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilderness_hut. Such
| buildings are un-lived-in for much of the year, if not
| "indefinitely until needed." The building needs to
| survive, not being crushed by snow, without any human
| supervision.
|
| As TFA emphasizes, grid electricity is unstable in rural
| places in winter; which means that even if such a
| building were able to be grid-connected (often not), and
| even if the building's owner was willing to spend
| electricity heating the building year-round in their
| absence (almost certainly not), the building would be
| likely to lose electricity at the worst possible moment:
| when there's tons of snow piling up and no humans there
| to shovel it.
| xnx wrote:
| Why not "just" make a weaker roof steeper?
| ctoa wrote:
| Most Tahoe buildings are not A-frames, 500-800" snow years
| are big years, not average, and also those are resort
| numbers, not towns where more houses are. Modern buildings in
| Tahoe are engineered to hold very high snow loads, typically
| have a lot of snow on the roof, you need to do snow removal
| as needed.
|
| I live in Mammoth where the town is significantly snowier
| than say Truckee or lake level Tahoe. The grocery store is
| open and operating normally no matter how snowy it is.
| Including the 22/23 winter when 695" fell in town. Lots of
| buildings did collapse that year though and snow removal was
| a constant struggle.
|
| But A-frames or other very angled roofs are not typical here,
| roofs have to handle 300 lbs/sq foot, and there are
| requirements for where a roof is allowed to shed to.
| Typically they will angle in one direction to control where
| shedding happens. Keeping the snow on the roof also provides
| insulation, in a typical snow year we may do basically no
| removal and just have a blanket of snow on the roof the whole
| winter.
| dathinab wrote:
| This isn't fully true.
|
| Snow can be bad enough to a point where even modern cement
| build building can have trouble.
|
| EDIT: I didn't realize A-frame refers to a _very_ steep angle
| instead of "just" a slightly steeply tilted roof.
|
| And A-frame roof help but do _not_ magically fix it, with the
| right kind of snow condition it can get stuck to the roof
| anyway and turn into ice there. This can be dangerous in 2
| ways. 1. Weight and 2. if it randomly comes all crashing down
| potentially hitting people. And sure it's should be a rare
| exception if you have stable build buildings. But rare
| exceptions happens anyway even in places with good
| infrastructure and/or cities etc.
|
| Similar while power outages really should not happen,
| sometimes there are natural catastrophes (or terrorist
| attacks) and power is gone for days anyway.
|
| Being prepared helps. Even if it's a situation which counts
| as natural disaster and external help will be provided,
| knowing that you aren't reliant on it and they can focus on
| people much more in need is nice.
|
| PS: I'm not a preper or anything, just prepared in the sense
| of basic knowledge and some minimal preparations like flash
| lights, water, food you can eat without stove, a larger
| battery, somewhat weather proof clothes, etc. Nothing fancy,
| nothing usable long term. Just enough to bridge some days of
| an local emergency situation.
| derefr wrote:
| > This can be dangerous in 2 ways. 1. Weight and 2. if it
| randomly comes all crashing down potentially hitting
| people.
|
| A-frames are steeply-angled enough that the weight mostly
| loads on itself (i.e. a snow drift builds up against the
| side of the house) rather than loading the roof. The whole
| point of the design is to be steeper than the
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_repose of snow, so
| that snow _can 't_ pile up on the roof to the point that it
| forms ice; it _must_ slough off quickly, as soon as it
| reaches some aggregation threshold -- just like water
| droplets _must_ drip down off a shower door after some
| aggregation threshold.
|
| ("Slow" snowfall, meanwhile, gets melted away rather than
| frozen on; the A-frame is the entire building envelope, and
| is also usually made of a highly thermally-conductive
| material; together, these properties mean that 99% of heat
| lost from the interior is lost _into_ this giant metal
| heatsink that wraps around the building, where the heat
| then conducts quickly inside that giant metal heatsink,
| warming up whatever cold spots there are anywhere along its
| surface. As long as the building has any kind of heating
| going on inside, the roof is essentially acting like a
| heated windshield.)
|
| A-frames also go all the way to the ground. There's nowhere
| for a person to stand where "snow (or even ice) sloughing
| off the sides" is dangerous, because there's never a
| _plummet_ phase to that slough-off; the snow arrives at the
| ground with very little speed, having been lightly
| friction-braked the whole time, since it was basically
| sliding down a metal slide. (That being said, you would
| never build an A-frame house under the expectation of
| having accessible sidewalks around it during the winter.
| You assume that snow drifts _will_ pile up on both sides.
| You want to go to the back yard? You go through the house.
| This is also why you never see an A-frame surrounded with a
| fence: the inevitable snowdrift would knock any side-fences
| over.)
| waffletower wrote:
| You'll even find ubiquitous A-frames in Southern California
| in mountain ranges. Crestline, Arrowhead, Big Bear, etc.
| greenie_beans wrote:
| imagine finding this painful to read because it doesn't
| describe your world
| tjohns wrote:
| The part about power outages is certainly true in Tahoe. I
| grew up there and remember a week-long power outage as a kid,
| since the snow took out the feeder lines from both CA and NV
| simultaneously.
|
| Outages that long aren't common, but it's not uncommon to
| lose power for about a day a few times each winter.
| ghc wrote:
| living in New England, I have also never heard of this and I
| don't think it's understandable at all. Trees are pruned around
| power lines _for a reason_.
| ghaff wrote:
| Live in ex-urban MA and it's not common but have had a couple
| of multi-day power outages in both winter and summer over the
| decades I've lived here. Don't remember the details of the
| summer outage but the winter one was a massive ice storm.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Couple of tail-ends of hurricanes in summer offlined a big
| chunk of Massachusetts when I was living there. Likely one
| of those?
| ghc wrote:
| Sure, but that's not the same as losing power during the
| first snowstorm every year. The massive ice storm was back
| in 2010 IIRC.
| PyWoody wrote:
| Oof, you just reminded me of the Ice Storm of '98.
|
| I can still hear all the trees just exploding. It was
| wild.
| mindslight wrote:
| The major ice storm I remember might have been 2012 or
| 2013. There was also a different snow storm (maybe that
| was 2010?) at the end of October when all the leaves were
| still on the trees. My parents lost power for something
| like 6 days (so much damage the crews were swamped). I
| had been visiting them, and gtfo as the snow was falling,
| and never lost power 2 hours away.
|
| I think this comes back to the framing of the article,
| stated as universal truths when it's really just someone
| who was woefully unprepared for a snow storm and
| subsequent power outage. Life threatening and horribly
| inconvenient for them yes, but nowhere near a universal
| experience.
|
| Prepare a few days ahead getting groceries, gas, etc.
| Make sure firewood totes are full. It starts snowing. Do
| a little shovel work to keep fire fed, if power goes out
| (rare, but always possible of course) a little more
| shovel work to set up generator. Wait for snow to stop,
| clean up with snowblower/tractor/shovels/etc, taking a
| variable number of sessions depending on how much snow
| fell.
|
| The main lesson is "be prepared", not all the little
| things the author got surprised by due to a wholesale
| lack of preparation.
| dd82 wrote:
| come up to maine and see how much pruning the power companies
| do. there's a reason high wind and heavy snow storms trash
| power lines
| ghc wrote:
| As an adolescent in Fayette (Maine), I had great fun
| helping out our neighbors with summertime tree-pruning
| parties. FWIW we had few power issues during winter, and
| our winters frequently featured 4-6 feet of snow cover.
| bitbckt wrote:
| Multiple day outages in Winter are not unusual in our part of
| Maine. Nearly everyone has a whole home generator for good
| reason.
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| growing up in chicagoland when it snowed blizzard level often
| with lots of accumulation (70s, 80s), the power never went off,
| to your point also.
| titzer wrote:
| Losing power is highly correlated with above-ground power
| lines. Who'd a thunk that.
| dd82 wrote:
| and wildfires, see PG&E in CA.
|
| they're expecting to spend 10B burying lines in the
| mountains.
|
| New england is pretty much one big rock garden/shelf where
| you're not digging through soil in alot of places but rock
| ledges.
| cucumber3732842 wrote:
| As much as a bunch of people on HN want to attribute this to
| European superiority or tax rate or investment or whatever,
| it's not. It's just a willingness to maintain things and not
| let idiots with no real problems roadblock the process.
|
| I live in a formerly industrial city in the US that gets
| serious snow every year and probably a multi foot storm every
| couple years. My power outages in the past decade consist of
| several seconds long blips and one 1hr outage at 8am on a
| national holiday when a transformer on my street went bang.
|
| My extended family lives hundreds of miles away in the same
| state, in a lesser snow climate in a city within spitting
| distance of the same population and density. They have power
| outages out the wazoo because the utilities can't cut trees and
| can't update infrastructure without the towns acting as a
| roadblock at the behest of a bunch of Karens who don't wan't
| their decorative 100yo trees losing limb and don't want
| construction activity to maintain or improve anything (not just
| utilities, they're actually less burdened but burdened
| nonetheless) performed without intentionally prohibitive and
| expensive environmental study this and approval that and so of
| course less gets done proactively.
|
| I'll leave assuming the demographic makeup of these cities and
| relative wealth levels up to the reader but I assure you it
| tracks stereotypes.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| Rural-ish Michigan here. It doesn't happen most years, and
| almost never in winter, but it can. It seems to happen a lot
| less than when I was a kid.
|
| Regardless, "my power never goes out" isn't a great plan for
| what to do if your power goes out. Ask Texas, they once thought
| the same.
| pastage wrote:
| Might be all of that infrastructure paid by oil, on the other
| side of the border in a not that remote of an area
| (10people/km2). We have absolutely had power outages lasting
| several days.
| mikestew wrote:
| I grew up in the middle of nowhere Midwest (where it snows
| plenty), and our electricity came from a rural co-op ("rural
| co-ops", because no one else is going to drag electrical wires
| out here, so we'll do it ourselves). We rarely lost power, the
| infrastructure where the TFA author lives just sucks.
| Sharlin wrote:
| Living in Finland, there's always news about tens of thousands
| of households being left without power for days after
| particularly heavy winter storms. It works as a reminder that
| yes, some people do still live in rural backwoods, their local
| electricity distribution depending on fragile wires suspended
| on wooden poles. Whereas living in a town of any size,
| blackouts caused by weather simply never happen.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Indiana here. Power outages due to fallen tree limbs, frozen
| trees "exploding", ice accumulation on lines, etc. is fairly
| common.
|
| It can take days to bring a grid back up after a major outage.
| The lead time to replace a city-sized transformer is nearly 4
| years, now (ask Puerto Rico about that).
|
| https://www.powermag.com/the-transformer-crisis-an-industry-...
| bombcar wrote:
| It's not really a question of urban/rural but more a question
| of "buried transmission lines" or not.
|
| We have buried lines and have few if any power issues. richer
| town a bit over does not, and loses power once a winter or
| so.
| jabroni_salad wrote:
| Unfortunately that won't always save you. One of my clients
| spent a pretty long time unpowered because some creek bed
| froze (why did they bury thru a creek bed???). When I
| called for followup they advised me that the truck they
| sent to remediate had its hydraulics freeze so there was an
| additional delay.
| wasmainiac wrote:
| Also live in Norway, nord Trondelag. Power went out 3 timeslast
| year, few times for days, but that was an unusual winter. This
| years it's only gone out for a few hours.
|
| Seems to be a maintenance issue, trees are not cleared well
| enough. Sambo said that the warmer winters make the trees more
| likely to fall over.
| dathinab wrote:
| ironically sometimes warmer winters are worse
|
| like if a typical winter is slightly but consistently below
| 0C then a warmer winter would have
|
| - more black ice
|
| - more ice rain
|
| - more snow melting and refreezing (so ice on roofs, ground
| or trees etc.)
|
| - wetter snow (so heavier)
|
| etc.
|
| Through where I live it is/was the opposite this year.
| Normally we have mostly above 0C degrees and rarely ice
| rain/black ice or similar. Also some way colder days (-10C
| and below) too cold to have much ice issues. This year for ~a
| month the temperature did non stop bounce between enough
| above 0 during the day to slightly melt things (but not
| fully) and below 0 at evening + cold ground to fully freeze
| any water produced by melting. So non stop icy walkways,
| streets etc. for nearly a month. During the last days before
| it got warmer some unmaintained walk way I passed by had 4cm
| of solid ice on it. At the same time it wasn't cold enough to
| do ice skating on lakes. It really wasn't a nice winter.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| This is largely true in places with above ground power lines,
| like the US. I happen to live in an area with buried lines and
| have never actually lost power due to snow.
| dathinab wrote:
| It's pretty much a "countries with bad infrastructure" problem.
|
| But it can happen anywhere, so you should be prepared anyway.
| Like I'm living in a city and had a surprise 5 day power outage
| this winter. And it's not a place with bad infrastructure I
| can't remember any noticeable power outage in the last 8+
| years. But unusual shit happened and power was gone for days.
|
| Luckily it wasn't too cold. But at the last night before power
| was returned it was 10C in my room. Not too bad if you are
| prepared, very much bad if you are not (as it was the last day
| I was kinda half prepared, that night did suck).
| goalieca wrote:
| Canada here, and it's gone out in winter. Not normal during
| snow storm but very common during ice storms.
| krzyk wrote:
| > In the first really heavy winter storm of the year, your power
| might go off. This is understandable but you do have to think
| about it beforehand.
|
| Power going is last thing I would think happens in such place. I
| understand wind, but snow? I get that rural places might get
| power cables in the air, but in cities those should go
| underground.
|
| I live in rural area, close to big city in a semi snowy place
| (depends on winter), in the last 10 years power went out only
| when constructions workers cut it out because they had to do some
| work on them.
| colechristensen wrote:
| Ice on power lines. It's the freezing rain mix in just the
| right conditions that builds up ice on anything and takes down
| lines.
| qingcharles wrote:
| All the damned power lines in Chicago seem to be above ground
| on poles in the alleys. They were always breaking. It was
| infuriating coming from a place with buried lines.
| rags2riches wrote:
| If you let people walk on snow, it turns to ice. Shovel that snow
| asap. Also keep a brush on your doorstep and always use it to
| clear off the small patches of snow that falls off your shoes,
| lest you soon have patches of ice there.
| internet_points wrote:
| +1, I learnt too late how useful a brush is, also for clearing
| small puffy snowfalls much faster than shovelling
| Quothling wrote:
| 24. Check your attic. If snow blows in there because your roof is
| damaged then it will melt and slowly turn your entire house into
| fungi. The damage to your roof can be so tiny you wouldn't spot
| it and your attic could still fill up during a snow storm.
|
| It should frankly be nr 1. At least if you ask any Scandinavian
| dad.
| Marsymars wrote:
| This is a concern of mine, and my attics (3 of them due to the
| way the house is built) are pretty inconvenient to check, so I
| put some battery-powered temp/humidity sensors in them.
|
| Haven't gotten around to setting up any alerting thresholds
| though... I'm not actually entirely sure what temp/humidity
| thresholds would actually be useful.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| Maybe you could put a camera up there to check for snow. Not
| sure how you'd power it if it was wireless though, not a lot
| of solar energy in an attic.
| yakshaving_jgt wrote:
| I've spent the past month in the mountains in Ukraine, and it's
| been as low as -18oC at times. Terrorists from russia have
| repeatedly knocked out power generation, and so on many days we
| have very little access to electricity in the house. Today we
| have 15.5 hours without power.
|
| During the day, we'll be somewhere where they have a generator.
| At night, it's cold. But you _can_ somewhat prepare for this. Two
| or three layers of duvets and blankets, paired with a hot water
| bottle somewhere in the middle of the bed under the covers will
| get you through the night.
| jader201 wrote:
| One thing this article doesn't cover (but probably should):
| shoveling snow has a fairly high risk of heart attacks
| (especially past 50):
|
| https://newsroom.heart.org/news/snow-shoveling-can-be-hazard...
| delis-thumbs-7e wrote:
| I suspect it is because snow storms are fairly rare or at least
| random and quite a few people do not a) realise they have not
| done much of any physical exercise for ages b) think shoveling
| snow is easy, try to do it fast and take too big loads into
| shovel (which you can with snow, but not with sand). For older
| people this might mean overexertion and possible seizure, if
| their cardiovascular health is not well either.
|
| Solution: don't be a hero. Take breaks. Take smaller
| shovelfuls. If the first ten shovelfuls are hard, how hard is
| the 1000th going to be? I live in Finland, are fairly fit and
| quite strong, but shoveling the car out of thick snow for half
| an hour is pretty hard work for me. For an older person, it
| must be double as hard.
| stevekemp wrote:
| Here in Finland there are a lot of people brought to hospital
| due to heart attacks whilst shoveling snow.
|
| I didn't expect that, though I can't claim to be surprised by
| the number of elderly people who go to casualty due to
| falling on ice.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Cold weather itself increases the chance of heart attacks. Heat
| waves get all of the news coverage, but cold weather is the
| real killer: https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-
| More-People-Ex...
| jve wrote:
| > 5. Snow is easiest to shovel when it's just fallen. The more
| time passes, the more freeze-thaw cycles - even gentle ones -
| build up and make the fallen snow denser and tougher. (This might
| be less true in very cold places where it never gets above
| freezing during the day? I don't know, honestly.)
|
| If it is very cold and no freeze-thaw cycle, the snow is very...
| Dry and grainy and still OK for shoveling.
|
| But yes, the puffy stuff just fallen from sky is very nice for
| shoveling.
| keiferski wrote:
| I grew up in a snowy place and I still live in one. I tell myself
| every year that this negative experience "builds character", that
| being stuck inside forces one to be more intellectual, read more,
| etc.
|
| I _kind of_ still believe that story, but as I get older it
| starts to feel like cope, and the sunny shores of Miami / Spain
| / Warm Place seem more full of life.
| vachina wrote:
| > starts to feel like cope
|
| In a way you're right. All the effort to reduce energy usage,
| go green, the savings are all negated with energy spent on
| generating heat and emissions.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Also, sunlight improves your health:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYnUPxG7ONk
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| > instruction manuals ... often have useful information ... A
| surprising number of my peers don't realize this.
|
| That's because instruction manuals _always_ have a lot of useless
| information, and many of them have _only_ such useless
| information. One of my computer mice came with guidance to avoid
| prolonged contact with skin and I 'm pretty sure nothing in that
| manual was of any value.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Manuals used to have tens of pages of useful information, if
| not more. These days it's just tens, if not a hundred pages of
| (mostly meaningless) warnings, in different languages, and
| sometimes only that. If you're lucky there's a single page of
| mostly pictures and a few lines of text, and typically just the
| obvious parts. I went through some old storage boxes yesterday.
| Found "manuals" for a number of items. One had four manuals.
| Turned out it was just that they could only stuff half a dozen
| languages of warnings in one manual, so they made a bunch of
| them, all just the same warnings, in different languages. More
| paper for the recycling centre.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| I particularly miss the spec page that used to be standard in
| every manual and is now increasingly rare.
|
| Of course, the really old/good manuals also had schematics,
| and there were a few cases where those were really help when
| we actually had to repair stuff like that. For some simpler
| things that would make sense even today but it ain't
| happening...
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Instruction manuals often only contain legally required
| information, making them particularly useless.
|
| You've happened upon the difference between compliant and
| capable. See also, any military technology, which costs 10
| times the normal price to meet strict compliance requirements,
| often while completely disregarding capability.
|
| My favorite response to the issue is the AcessiByeBye plug-in
| (https://www.accessibyebye.org/) which blocks accessibility
| compliance overlays that make web pages difficult to use with
| keyboard navigation and accessibility tools like screen
| readers, but are needed to meet accessibility regulations.
| jonasdegendt wrote:
| Took a winter trip to Norway once with friends, which included a
| Norwegian that'd immigrated away to the much milder climate the
| rest of us were all used to. We got a meter of overnight snow and
| I'd never seen a person so eager to get shoveling, it took her
| right back to her childhood. What a machine too, once she got
| going.
|
| We were dealing with -10C to -20C , but as someone else pointed
| out my takeaway was that it's really your extremities that you
| need to think about, there rest of my body was easy to keep warm
| in comparison. I ended up taking a pair of winter motorcycle
| gloves I had laying around on the trip, water and wind proof and
| those worked like a charm with an additional pair of thin, inner
| gloves, so there's a tip!
|
| I didn't quite nail keeping my feet warm though, but I was
| wearing regular hiking boots with very thick wool socks. Still
| felt like I was draining heat to the ground at a rapid rate
| though.
| Stratoscope wrote:
| Lately I've been fascinated by Yakutsk, the coldest large city on
| Earth.
|
| About 350,000 people live there, and winter temperatures can drop
| to -64degC (-83degF).
|
| And regardless of the temperature or time of year, they have
| shopping malls, restaurants, and everything else you might expect
| to find in any big city.
|
| Here are a few recent videos I enjoyed:
|
| _24 Hours in the Coldest City on Earth_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-WGGDRyf68
|
| _How We Live in the World 's Coldest City - Typical Apartment
| Tour_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ikUSFU7TlYc
|
| _How We Heat Our APARTMENT at -64degC| -83degF_
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cHbsYYELV94
| disillusioned wrote:
| The outdoor market in that 24 hours video really got me. These
| women are just out here, selling very, very frozen fish, for
| hours at a time. Like... they didn't want to move that market
| inside?
| Stratoscope wrote:
| It really is something.
|
| Of course, large commercial kitchens often have walk-in
| refrigerators and walk-in freezers.
|
| In Yakutsk, you have an open-air walk- _out_ freezer.
|
| There are a few months in the summer when temperatures are
| similar to the Bay Area. I could probably wear my usual aloha
| shirts!
| qingcharles wrote:
| Living in a place that often drops down to insane temps, I am
| also obsessed with watching the YouTubes from there.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| Once I shoveled some stairs immediately after the first snowfall
| of the year, on a night well below freezing, and there was a boot
| print of solid ice frozen onto one of the steps. It's one of the
| creepiest unexplainable things I've ever seen. I can't think of
| any way it could have formed, and it was in the middle of a
| staircase with at least a dozen steps.
|
| My best guess is that, because it was a wooden step, the boot
| print was permanently imprinted into the step itself, and somehow
| it had filled with water and frozen before the snowfall.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Aliens. It is always the aliens. And they love to wear Martens.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| Maybe some one walked up the steps with packed snow on their
| boot and it came loose on that step and then froze and was
| snowed on after.
| jval43 wrote:
| Sounds very grim. I live in a snowy part of Europe and very
| little of this applies, except the stay dry and warm part. Here
| are 2 things I learned:
|
| 1. Do what everyone else does, when they do it. And don't, when
| they don't. You could die.
|
| There is usually a reason even if you don't understand it right
| now. You don't want to find out _why_ when you 're out in the
| cold and freezing.
|
| 2. Buy gear locally.
|
| There's sometimes reason a certain item is on the shelf and not
| the stylish one from California, or the super heavy-duty one from
| Norway. Unfortunately, often this is only obvious in hindsight.
| Does not depend on price, but it does apply across the board from
| clothing to cars.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I'm in California. We have good cold-weather gear, you just
| have to get it from the right kind of store, specifically one
| that supplies outdoor workers.
| jval43 wrote:
| Maybe California is a bad example. What I'm getting at is the
| selection for what you need is usually larger and more
| applicable to the conditions locally.
|
| I see plenty of tourists with winter gear that is either
| insufficient, or completely over the top. Whereas if you buy
| locally you'd generally find the right stuff.
| dlcarrier wrote:
| I think the bigger problem is that many of the tourists
| don't normally spend time outside, so they are used to only
| having enough gear for a heated building or car, even at
| home.
| wavemode wrote:
| One of the big things people don't appreciate enough is the
| importance of thick, layered, solid winter gear. When reading
| reviews online "these gloves are so warm!" you really need to
| interrogate whether the reviewer is from northern Canada or
| northern California.
| shmel wrote:
| I grew up in Siberia where it gets cold down to -40C
| (coincidentally it's also -40F). I don't recall power going out
| for more than a few seconds. 24h without power or heating sounds
| batshit crazy for me. If it's a regular occasion it means either
| the infrastructure is outright non-existent or it gets literally
| blown up like in Ukraine. Same goes for shoveling snow. Yeah, I
| did it. Probably about 5 times in 20 years.
| steve_gh wrote:
| Gloves: if you have to take them off outside, brush the snow off
| them first, then put them in an inside pocket. You will naturally
| sweat a little, so the gloves will be a little damp inside even
| if you don't notice it. If your gloves are in an inside pocket
| they stay warm. Otherwise you will find that your hands freeze
| when you put your gloves back on.
| SenHeng wrote:
| I've found used snowboarding gear is best for when you need to
| muck around in the snow.
|
| Mittens keep your fingers warm while still letting you handle
| stuff like shovels and grab at things. You can dig through snow
| in mittens.
|
| Used snowboard boots tend to be fairly water proof, soft enough
| that you can walk in them, hard enough that you won't stub your
| toes and are fairly good at keeping the snow out.
|
| Snowboard pants and jackets are both water _and_ wind proof to
| keep the weather out. They're baggy so your movement is not
| restricted. They also have a million pockets so you can carry
| stuff. Jackets usually have a hoodie so you can put on
| headphones.
|
| When shovelling snow, don't use a shovel. Use a snow scoop. Push
| instead of lifting. If you have to use a shovel, use something
| metallic that easily slices through snow, then push them out of
| the way with the scoop. Don't lift.
|
| Or get a snow blower.
|
| If your city plows your streets, clear the snow onto the streets
| just as the plower passes by your house. Then you don't have to
| get rid of the snow yourself.
| jjav wrote:
| The #1 lesson to learn from living in a snowy place, is to move
| away to a place that does not have that problem!
|
| That's what I did and living on the California coast is much
| better.
| tclancy wrote:
| A fun one I only learned recently in spite of having lived with
| snow all my life: while propane doesn't go liquid until around
| -80F, the oil pan in the generator needs help somewhere before
| -40F (and actually that was the wind chill, so it was probably
| only -20F or so). Thankfully we do have woodstoves, plural.
| bigchorizo wrote:
| Here's a lifehack my dad taught me. If you have cold feet and no
| way to warm them - stuff some newspaper (or any kind of paper
| really) in your boots or socks. Most of the cold comes from
| moisture and paper is incredibly good at sucking it all up. The
| difference is huge and instant .
|
| I feel like this trick has saved me from catching a cold on quite
| a few occassions.
| BrtByte wrote:
| Old-school winter hacks tend to be simple physics, not magic
| HugoTea wrote:
| If they turned out to be magic I'd be more surprised
| wnolens wrote:
| This advice was also given to me if I ever get caught in the
| rain while camping and soak my shoes. Bring some newspaper for
| both a firestarter and for leaving in your shoes overnight, and
| wake up to dry shoes!
| euroderf wrote:
| > If the power's been off for a while, like, over 24 hours, and
| then suddenly it comes back on for a few minutes, and then it
| immediately goes out again
|
| This is probably because the average idiot neglects to unplug
| motors (refrigerator, and other inductive loads), bringing down
| the network again, entirely unnecessarily.
| BrtByte wrote:
| Snow has this way of revealing which parts of your life are
| decorative and which parts are infrastructure
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I suspect most places that experience regular heavy snow, deal
| well with it.
|
| I have a friend that went to school in Buffalo, NY. That's a city
| that experiences "lake effect" snow, during the winter.
|
| He says all the sidewalks are basically "snow gorges," but the
| roads clear quickly, and everyone knows how to dress for the
| cold.
|
| He tells me a story about visiting northern Quebec, one summer,
| and seeing houses with a second front door, set on the second
| floor, and was told they were "snow doors," for deep winter, so
| folks can get out, when the snow gets deep.
|
| We tend to adapt well.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| Is it possible to use a flamethrower instead of a shovel to clear
| your driveway?
| timbit42 wrote:
| Yes, but it's nowhere near as effective as you might think.
| Also, due to its ineffectiveness, it ends up costing a LOT of
| fuel.
| Reubachi wrote:
| those handheld propane torches, oft used for weedburning on
| asphault/concrete, are very good for clearing "post snow clean
| up ice patches, IE tire treads that iced over, foot prints.
|
| Not useful for snow as you'll quickly be swimming and out of
| propane
| OkayPhysicist wrote:
| The math there gets pretty bad pretty fast. A cubic foot of
| snow represents ~15 lbs of ice. That corresponds to at 144 BTU
| to melt a lb of ice, that means you need at a minimum 2160 BTU
| of fuel (assuming 100% of your heat goes to melting the snow).
| A gallon of gasoline represents about 114,000 BTU, so each
| gallon of gas could clear, in a best case scenario where you
| can capture 100% of the heat, only 50 cubic feet of snow.
| That's a 10-foot by 10-foot area covered in 6 inches of snow.
|
| But even that's in the dream scenario where somehow your snow
| is in a sealed, insulated space. In the real world, snow tends
| to be outside, in the cold air, which is very eager to sink and
| replace any hot air you make at ground level. So you're losing
| any heat that warms the air at all. And all that air in the
| snow makes it a _fantastic_ insulator, meaning the vast
| majority of your heat isn 't going to penetrate.
|
| Interestingly, this same phenomena makes melting snow from
| _underneath_ much more effective (as the great insulating snow
| captures the heat). You still need to grapple with the kinda
| nuts amount of energy it takes to melt ice, but at least you
| 're not wasting 90% of it.
| thecyborganizer wrote:
| xkcd explored this question. too fuel-inefficient to be
| practical. much better to use that same fuel to run a giant
| snowblower (and move the snow rather than melt it).
|
| https://what-if.xkcd.com/130/
| cess11 wrote:
| Regarding 5, the colder it is, the quicker the snow will settle
| and become hard to shovel by hand. Not like when it thaws and
| refreezes, but if it is -25 C you'll want to move most of it
| while it is falling or shortly after. It is likely the snow
| particles are very small and it will become very dense if allowed
| to sit for a while.
|
| Regarding 6, you can't shovel snow fast. It's a marathon, not a
| sprint. Don't use a regular shovel, there are sled-like
| contraptions that allow you to push the snow around on the ground
| and that will allow you to bring it further with less effort.
| Dress appropriately, you don't want to become too sweaty and you
| are going to figure out an equilibrium where your heat and sweat
| production stabilises your temperature, or you're going to have
| to take breaks and on average get less done per unit time.
|
| Regarding 9, if you don't have an axe, get one. In harsh
| conditions tools are what keep you alive and things like axes and
| knives are part of the basic equipment you need to have and take
| good care of. You do not split the wood indoors, do not bring it
| indoors unless it is split in small enough parts that lighting it
| will be easy.
|
| Also, you should really avoid using wood that hasn't had good
| shelter up until time of use. Moist wood will add a lot of soot
| to your chimney and you are likely not able to clear it yourself,
| meaning that you run the risk of a chimney fire.
| neuroelectron wrote:
| 5. Snow will still get denser overtime, even if it never gets
| above freezing. the sunlight will melt it regardless.
| mikemarsh wrote:
| Beautiful, living in Southern Michigan and dealing with slightly
| more snow than usual this year, I feel like a wimp compared to
| some of my snowy-weather compatriots here from Norway, Canada,
| etc.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| > If you're short on kindling, sufficient cardboard CAN be used
| to light a big log on fire.
|
| Another trick to make kindling, take cardboard or old egg boxes
| or I suppose kindling wood and dip them in molten candle wax /
| paraffin.
| deltoidmaximus wrote:
| If you're my FIL you just put kerosene on the log first.
| graybeardhacker wrote:
| I see a lot of people saying "We never lose power, what are you
| talking about?"
|
| I've lived in several places in New England, some more rural than
| others. Some places you lose power often, other you don't. Even
| within the same town. Even if you are not in a rural area. It
| just so happened where I lived previously, we rarely lost power
| while friend across town lost it all the time. Many times I
| loaned them my generator.
|
| I now live in a much more rural place. We lose power more now.
| Not often, but it happens. Trees fall, cars skid into poles, shit
| happens. It's good to be prepared. Ver bad things happen to your
| pipes without heat.
| 827a wrote:
| Interesting conversation I had with someone from a semi-warmer
| climate recently, as they visited: After seeing all the snow on
| the ground, they commented "wow it must snow all the time here".
| Me: "Well, we had that big winter storm, when was that, three
| weeks ago? I don't think its snowed much since then". You can see
| the gears turning as they come to the realization that snow
| doesn't, like, go anywhere. If it snows below freezing, that snow
| stays on the ground. It doesn't melt. The city can move it to
| more convenient locations, and a very few rich cities have snow
| melting machines, but most cities don't. Its obvious when you
| think about it, but if all you're used to is rain its not
| trivially obvious: The grand snow strategy of most municipalities
| is "hope it gets warm soon".
| pants2 wrote:
| This is an interesting way to frame it, but then the obvious
| question is, for areas where it almost never gets above
| freezing, why doesn't the snow get infinitely thick?
|
| The other main ways you lose snow are: sublimation, wind
| blowing it elsewhere, compaction, and getting dirty (darker
| color helps it melt in the sun). All of these are relevant for
| other cities in the snow.
| nancyminusone wrote:
| It does, see: Antarctica
| sophacles wrote:
| Compaction doesn't lose snow. It loses air. This causes the
| pile of snow to shorten.
| dathinab wrote:
| > but then the obvious question is, for areas where it almost
| never gets above freezing, why doesn't the snow get
| infinitely thick?
|
| this is how glaciers are created
|
| snow getting stuck up, not melting, compressing by weight
| into much much smaller ice and then more stacking up. And
| during the last ice age this repeating for a very long time
| (because snow is mostly air, so the amount of ice you get
| from it is very little).
|
| The reasons why this isn't too big of an issue on the
| north/south pool, Antarctica etc. is because this places are
| also very dry/don't have a lot of snow fall.
|
| To have snowfall you need water in the air. Which mostly
| comes from heat evaporating water. This doesn't happen in non
| stop freezing cold places.
|
| So the wind needs to carry the wet air over.
|
| But there is a gradient between hot wet air places and very
| cold places. So a lot of water rains or snows off before
| reaching the places where snow doesn't melt.
|
| A large part of the south pool is technically a desert as it
| has hardly any _new_ snow fall. Just a lot of years old snow
| getting moved around by wind.
| bevelwork wrote:
| We had a house growing up in Alaska with a steep pitch, and our
| Dad would get us in trouble for parking the car "too close" to
| the threshold of the house where the the accumulated snow on the
| roof could slide of and pound anything in its path.
|
| One day sitting at the dinner table, we heard a giant slide and
| heard it smash onto the car, and fortunately we found the car
| keys in my Dad's jacket that night.
| standarditem wrote:
| The other way to flush a toilet without running water is to fill
| the tank of the toilet with water, then flush it normally.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| I have to 2nd this.
|
| It's significantly easier. I used to do this in the CA drought
| where I would fill a bucket when waiting for the shower / sink
| to get hot, and then use the bucket to fill the toilet after I
| flushed it.
| humanpotato wrote:
| The only sane way unless you have not enough water to fill the
| tank. Oh wait, you can fill it with that solid water on the
| ground, as long as you give it a few hours to melt from the
| ambient heat in the house between each use.
| NoSalt wrote:
| Let's have an article on:
|
| "Lessons you will learn living in a place that doesn't regularly
| get a lot of snow."
|
| I live in Northern Virginia, and ... DAMN, this has absolutely
| sucked for the past [almost] three weeks.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > If you're short on kindling, sufficient cardboard CAN be used
| to light a big log on fire.
|
| Fatwood (on Amazon) is amazing for this kind of stuff. It's much
| easier to start up a wood stove with a few sticks of it than
| "sufficient cardboard".
|
| (Que the holier-than-thou folks who admonish anyone who has a
| wood stove.)
| threethirtytwo wrote:
| 24. Live in CA.
| gnarlouse wrote:
| > Push comes to shove
|
| No, no, no!
|
| _Push comes to shovel_
| mikestew wrote:
| I really do hate throwing shade on someone's article, but this
| reads like one of those "Pearls of Wisdom from Two Years of
| Junior-Level Software Development". Thanks, person who just a few
| months ago moved to a snowy, remote area with poor
| infrastructure, but this is NOT how you flush a toilet with no
| running water:
|
| " _Anyway, to flush a toilet without a running tank, dump about a
| gallon of water right into the bowl as fast as possible._ "
|
| No, ya dork, you fill the tank _then_ flush. There were a few
| other pearls, but no need to pile on. Anyway, I hope someone
| finds it useful or perhaps is put off the idea of moving to
| rustic, romanticized places when they 'd be better off elsewhere.
| chasd00 wrote:
| It's been a while since I had to operate a toilet without water
| service but what they described only works for the first flush
| since the tank would be full. After that, the tank is empty and
| after you fill the bowl, with the tank still empty, there will
| be barely any gravity assisted flow to "flush". Makes me think
| they've actually never been in that situation.
| micromacrofoot wrote:
| No mention of wool unfortunately, if you've got to be wet and
| cold... nothing else beats it.
| snapetom wrote:
| I'll add this - for the love of God, please brush the snow off
| your car before you drive, especially after a storm.
|
| If it gets above freezing during the day and freezes again at
| night, the snow will go through a melt/freeze cycle to become a
| nice thick sheet of ice. I don't know how many times I've seen a
| 3 inch sheet of ice go flying off a car traveling 70 mph on the
| Garden State Parkway. This is common sense and it's infuriating
| how brain dead people are about this. Incidents have killed
| people before.
|
| Thankfully I've also seen NJ State Troopers hand out tickets for
| this. I now live in a state, Washington, where the politicians
| are too busy grandstanding on stupid issues while ice sheets go
| flying at cars around on the freeway after a snowstorm.
| teeray wrote:
| > Even if your house technically runs on propane, and you have
| propane, electricity might still run the propane, so your house
| is going to get cold. Unless you run the woodstove. Which you
| will
|
| Corollary: don't buy a house in a place where it snows without
| two fully independent sources of heat. You want backups. There's
| a reason why woodstoves are so popular in New England. A
| millivolt gas log stove on a thermostat can also be a good
| alternative.
| dathinab wrote:
| Part of this isn't just relevant for "heavy snow" places but also
| for rear emergency situations you anyway should be prepared for.
|
| This winter we had a power hick up _and then_ a multi day power
| outage.
|
| > You have a lot of batteries, flashlights, shelf stable food,
| warm clothes, and drinking water stored, right? Good.
|
| I hadn't. Luckily the power outage was quite local so I could
| take a bus for ~30min to get to some shops, including ones with
| flashlights.
|
| Also no propane heater or similar, you don't expect to need it
| where I live. I would have loved having had it even if just for a
| bit.
|
| I also had a 1kWh battery.
|
| But some annoying surprise:
|
| - 1kWh is a bad size, to big (but still possible) to nice by food
| carry somewhere where you can recharge it but too small to use it
| for a lot of things
|
| - Turns out even if you blanked is theoretically insulating
| enough to handle very cold temperatures, if it's cooled down, you
| bed is cooled down, and you yourself are cooled down you need
| quite a time to warm it up with body head. Doesn't matter that it
| can handle the temperature or having very warm clothes it will be
| a huge pain. Having some way (e.g. heat blanked run by battery)
| to slightly heat up your blanked _before_ you enter it makes an
| enormous difference when sleeping at ~10C.
|
| - In general learn about winter camping tips they help you if you
| need to bridge 1-2 days in a very cold apartment. Also having a
| winter camping sleeping bag can be nice.
|
| -----
|
| The 3rd point is just general good advice, at least skim the
| manual it might have surprisingly important things in it. And
| sometimes random but useful tips.
|
| ---
|
| > build up and make the fallen snow denser and tougher
|
| fun fact: this is how glaciers are formed, from non melting snow
| fall pilling up over years and by wight compressing the snow to
| ice
| marpstar wrote:
| The most recent thing I've learned after a lifetime in the
| Midwest US: There's nothing like the 'Snow Wonder Snow Scoop'[1]
| for moving snow manually.
|
| Someone left theirs at my wife's previous home and she's kept it
| since. I don't get sore after shoveling anymore. I have a snow
| blower but only use it when there's more than 6" on the ground.
|
| I've tried other "push sled" style scoops and none of them work
| this well (and weigh so little).
|
| [1]: https://snowscoop.com
| j_bum wrote:
| The pictures show what looks like very powdery snow.
|
| How does this fare with wet and icy snow?
| waffletower wrote:
| Frozen plumbing pipe lessons ought to be here.
| wafflemaker wrote:
| While talking about Norwegian ways to keep warm in winter you
| can't forget their wool underwear (ullundertoy), which is not
| underwear (but is often made of wool).
|
| It's a set of pants and a long sleeve, worn right on your
| underwear/body. It greatly improves your heat comfort in winter,
| which I quickly learned the first time out of town in cold with
| Norwegians. They take it as a given that everyone owns a set.
|
| There's also a hi tech version called superundertoy, which is
| good at channeling sweat away from body in addition to keeping
| you warm.
|
| Ullundertoy is very warm. I haven't put mine on yet this winter
| (only using regular long johns), as temperatures haven't fallen
| below -15*C yet (and it's been coldest winter so far this
| decade). But I'd wear it if going outside for longer and planning
| on staying stationary.
| stronglikedan wrote:
| The lesson I learned is to never live in a snowy place, but
| they're great for visiting!
| jimnotgym wrote:
| If too many people read this, then what are FailArmy going to put
| in all their videos?
| bmitch3020 wrote:
| Two lessons for driving in snow/ice:
|
| 1. In a parking lot, clear behind the car, and just enough to get
| inside. Then back the car out of the space, clear the car off,
| clear the parking space out, put the car back in the parking
| space and clear everything you knocked off. If tried without
| pulling the car out of the space, you'd be trying not to ding up
| your neighbor's car, clearing in tight spaces under the car, and
| then doing it all again when you clear off the top of the car
| into that narrow gap.
|
| 2. Don't drive unless you absolutely need to. You may know what
| you're doing, but others almost certainly don't. But do make sure
| to clear out at least one car, just in case there's an emergency.
| soared wrote:
| 19 - why not just dump water into the tank and flush like normal?
| Dumping water into the bowl directly is just more complex than
| letting the existing lever do it.
| beloch wrote:
| >"Do NOT get wet and cold."
|
| This is very true whether the source of the water is outside or
| _inside_ your clothing.
|
| Unfortunately, this warning is immediately preceded by the
| recommendation that you should use rain-gear in winter. A lot of
| rain gear is very lacking in breathability. If you go out and do
| something physical in raingear, you will likely wind up drenched
| in sweat. i.e. Wet. The moment you stop being physical, you will
| get cold. i.e. Cold and wet. This is a recipe for hypothermia.
| helle253 wrote:
| > Do NOT get wet and cold.
|
| One thing i keep saying over and over, and few believe me, unless
| they know from experience - is that winters in Chicago are
| actually significantly more miserable than Minneapolis, where I
| went to college.
|
| Minneapolis winters are so cold that everything is dry as a bone,
| so the cold doesn't 'stick' the same way - Chicago winters sit
| mostly in the 20-40 range where it's both wet and cold (often
| raining at a balmy 34-38F), and it's much much more immiserating
| to be outside.
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