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Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

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Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#101

Post by qingcharles »

hysan wrote: post #22

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…

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#102

Post by Stratoscope »

disillusioned wrote: post #94
Stratoscope wrote: post #87

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 –64°C (−83°F). 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…

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?

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!

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#103

Post by jval43 »

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#104

Post by wellf »

Tor3 wrote: post #85
slillibri wrote: post #2

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.

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.

The remedy is swim or air conditioning.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#106

Post by shmel »

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#107

Post by qingcharles »

dlcarrier wrote: post #68
fulafel wrote: post #5

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?

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.

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#108

Post by qingcharles »

krzyk wrote: post #26

> 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 wint…

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#109

Post by dlcarrier »

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #73

> 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.

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#110

Post by vachina »

keiferski wrote: post #57

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.

> 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.

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