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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

#61

Post by fifilura »

Ekaros wrote: post #21
joecool1029 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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.

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#62

Post by brabel »

mzi wrote: post #42
colechristensen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#63

Post by matttproud »

nxpnsv wrote: post #41
colechristensen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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, 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 …

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#64

Post by brabel »

dlcarrier wrote: post #59
brettgriffin wrote: post #4

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.

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…

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 .

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#65

Post by MaulingMonkey »

nxpnsv wrote: post #41
colechristensen wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have above ground power lines in the nordics too. They are just built to handle our climate.

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.)

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#66

Post by delis-thumbs-7e »

jader201 wrote: post #50

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...

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#67

Post by da_chicken »

yokoprime wrote: post #25

> 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.

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#68

Post by dlcarrier »

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.

Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place

#70

Post by LeafItAlone »

colechristensen wrote: post #30
yokoprime wrote: post #25

> 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.

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.

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.
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