Actually, I thought of all that stuff. But after living through more than 60 New England winters I just ain't buyin' it. Call it a blind spot, or whatever, but that's how I feel about it. But that does beg the question of how people in places like Buffalo that get really severe winters feel about it?
*Buffalo* has severe winters? Trying being in Iqaluit or Alaska
How we deal with winter is a state of mind. At its coldest, we go down to about -40 C here....but that might be one or two weeks out of the winter. And it's still bearable......but I'm not going for any polar bear swims
Of course, I love skiing, and that crisp, sharp feeling to the air when it's -20 and there's a fresh blanket of powder. Or even rising sun illuminating the glittering crystal that encases the trees after a bout of freezing rain. There's a beauty to winter. In a lot of ways, I like it better than summer.
And then some people hate it and just head south for the winter.
I never really thought that GRR Martin was saying that they were getting mile thick ice sheets. The whole "winter is coming" thing might pertain to a climate that is a little more swingy than our current climate. More like what Europe was like in the Little Ice Age.....it could still mean a colder than normal period, with true winter lasting longer than normal....say, snow hitting in September/October, and sticking around until May/June. Leave a very short/cool growing season.
Doesn't mean the trees are covered in ice sheets.
For that matter, even if the trees *were* covered in ice sheets, they grow back. It really doesn't take that long. They cleared out forests near my cottage about 15 years ago, and at this point, they're almost grown back......It was down to stumps and ferns and shrubs etc. but the surrounding forest, led by fast growing poplars came in very quickly, filled in the area, and now those trees are like 30' tall, and slower growing trees like pines, spruce, and maples are all starting to come back in as well. It's not returned to an old growth forest.......it hasn't grown that much...but for all intents and purposes it's an actual forest again.
Deep snow wouldn't really take that long to accumulate....depending on temperatures. There was a winter about three years back that was just brutal. Wasn't even super cold. Just consistently in the 0 to -15 range. The snowbanks were over my head, so that's over 6' tall, and that's after maybe a month or so. Some areas of the country had homes with snow accumulated up to the roof. Despite all that, despite the face that most of our garden plants, shrubs and trees were pretty much buried for weeks or months at a time, they didn't die. When spring came, the snow melted, and the plants woke up. They're pretty resilient. Would Westeros be any different?
Without snowblowers and ploughs and such, I'm sure it wouldn't be that difficult to get a pretty deep snow pack. And people have lived here for thousands of years before Europeans. Populations would be smaller, of course, and agriculture would be a lot more difficult, but if Westeros had periods where the climate would cool several degrees for spans of 10 years, I could envision a massive drive to try and stockpile food and livestock in advance of the cool down. Then, once it hits, the summer shortens to maybe 2-3 months, winter lengthens to 7 months, and people grow what food they can during the short summers, and maybe you have widespread famine as the years go by. Then, things warm up again after a few years, the full growing season comes back, and populations rebound.
In any case, humans are pretty resilient. Without modern technology, we spread across this planet very effectively. Populations are higher in milder climates....but people still lived pretty much everywhere except Antarctica.
Banshee
