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Snow in Chicago
- Thread starter JoeGKushner
- Start date
DaveStebbins
First Post
Well, the big storm bands hit 30 or so miles north of here, we only got 3-5 inches or thereabouts. Lots of blowing, so there were virtual whiteout conditions yesterday at times, but not much accumulation. I feel a little disappointed because I sort of like big snowstorms, but I'm also happy that things weren't too bad for all the people traveling around here.
-Dave
-Dave
Imperialus
Explorer
I swear this has been the wierdest November in Calgary that I can remember. We had a few inches during the first couple days of November but none since and the last week it has hit 20 degrees! My heating bill was less than a hundred dollers! It's surreal.
cignus_pfaccari
First Post
Queen_Dopplepopolis said:
I'm from Kentucky.
I came out to DC for school.
Part of my reasoning was "Hey, in the winter when they're reporting from the White House, it always seems like there's snow on the ground. Maybe it snows more in DC than in KY!"
No, not really. We get about the same as we did at home, just a day later. Actually, in the last year or so, some big storms that hit my area of KY missed the DC area completely (like that huge storm that dumped 20+ inches and trapped me in Evansville, IN...).
But, just once, I'd like to miss work due to the weather. We did miss one day back in '02, and I think we're due for another one.
Brad
DaveStebbins
First Post
A buddy of mine worked in the DC area years ago. He tells the story of getting up one day and seeing a half inch or inch of snow on the ground and thinking nothing of it (he grew up in upstate NY and went to school in Buffalo like I did). He only recalled later that the roads seemed strangely empty as he went to work. When he got there, the parking lot was deserted and the guard asked him what the heck he was doing out in this weather, which had shut down the entire area. He looked around and thought, "but it's only one lousy inch of snow. They wouldn't even mention it at home, much less delay or cancel anything." And that day he learned the difference between dealing with something on a regular basis and seeing it rarely.cignus_pfaccari said:
-Dave
Vancouver, where I grew up, doesn't get snow every winter but it still does a reasonable portion of the time. However, because Vancouverites nurture the pathological belief that they live in a Mediterranean climate and not in a rain forest, they are strangely shocked and paralyzed when snow does show up.
For instance, we built a rapid transit system in 1986 that, for the first four years of its operation, shut down every time there was snow on the tracks. It had never occurred to its designers that it might snow.
Similarly, Vancouver has a routine for what to do when it starts snowing. All the key businesses in the downtown core immediately shut down and tell their employees to go home (Vancouver has horrendously bad traffic planning at the best of times), instantaneously creating total gridlock, of a rush hour on steroids. This congestion prevents any of the city's snow-moving vehicles from reaching the bottlenecks that need to be cleared. As these bottlenecks fill with snow and cars with summer tires, the rush hour changes from a slow crawl to a dead stop as the various hills that one must cross to get out to the suburbs fill up with immovable cars and unsalted snow.
For instance, we built a rapid transit system in 1986 that, for the first four years of its operation, shut down every time there was snow on the tracks. It had never occurred to its designers that it might snow.
Similarly, Vancouver has a routine for what to do when it starts snowing. All the key businesses in the downtown core immediately shut down and tell their employees to go home (Vancouver has horrendously bad traffic planning at the best of times), instantaneously creating total gridlock, of a rush hour on steroids. This congestion prevents any of the city's snow-moving vehicles from reaching the bottlenecks that need to be cleared. As these bottlenecks fill with snow and cars with summer tires, the rush hour changes from a slow crawl to a dead stop as the various hills that one must cross to get out to the suburbs fill up with immovable cars and unsalted snow.
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