111–120 of 346 posts
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...
> 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.
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
That said I remember power could go out from a lightning storm or without any reason. But pretty rarely
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…
> 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.
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).
> 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.
How does that compare to Norway?
> 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.
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.)
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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.
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.
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We have above ground power lines in the nordics too. They are just built to handle our climate.
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, w…
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)
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Any recommendations about the boots? Or what to check for?
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…
When given a choice, soldiers will tend to choose something like Salomon Toundra.