The big blizzards I have been in have been the Alps, Colorado and the US Sierra Nevada. I used to grow a beard just so it would get covered in ice and protect my face.
What's the best place to live in the US?
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Zardnaar
Deity
Wouldn't be surprised if a Canadian blizzard is -25 or something stupid.
A blizzard is a whole different category of weather than merely snowing. Blizzards include things like hypothermia, frostbite, zero-visibility leading to getting lost or run over, and of course black ice. And then there's the possibility of power outages and high winds blowing trees or power poles over.
Going sledding in a blizzard is something someone would do if they have a death wish. They are dangerous, and that is the reason why both the police and Environment Canada tell people to stay home, and not to do any nonessential traveling. And if you do have to travel, have emergency equipment with you. If you're going out on the highway, you need to be prepared to survive for a couple of days if your vehicle gets stuck.
I suspect that one of the words in this sentence should actually be "Canadian."
This, and colder. It's the wind that's the real danger. When it gets going, it can blow trucks over on the highway.
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Or does Great Britain receive unusual blizzards as compared to Northern Ireland?I suspect that one of the words in this sentence should actually be "Canadian."
Haha, well, mission accomplished.
I did ride the Holmes County Trail! And the Kokosing Gap Trail (the best of the ones I've ridden in Ohio)... and I think there's a section between them with a different name. I'm working on the entire Ohio-to-Erie Trail, still need to cover most of north-of-Massillon, and the southernmost parts.
And yeah, my grandparents lived close enough to Amish country that I've traveled through it a bunch and I'm not sure why the English (the Amish term for non-Amish people) find the Amish to be so charming. I guess because it seems quaint and rustic and nostalgic in a way, and there are some good Amish products? But while there are big-city Ohioians who find Amish country charming, I've only wound up vacationing in Amish country because of bike trails. Nothing against the Amish (although the horse pollution problem is real), it just doesn't have the same must-revisit appeal to me that it does for some people.
I also wound up in Ontario (Canada) Amish country to ride bike trails. The differences were interesting - Ohio Amish are comparatively much less willing to drive motorcars, but much more enthusiastic about bicycles and electric bicycles. For e-bikes in particular, the Ohio Amish are considerably more enthusiastic early adopters than the Ohio English, which is not what I would have expected. Makes some practical sense given the hills and the not-driving-motorcars, but it inverts conventional wisdom about adoption of 21st-century technology.
My understanding is that blizzards are characterized by white-out conditions, that is, you cannot see for any appreciable distance in front of you due to the combination of wind and snow. I cannot imagine it being safe to ski in such conditions, since it would be very easy to veer off course and run into a tree.
Now just a plain-old heavy snow storm? Sure, and freshly-falling natural snow is great for skiing. But I want to be able to see where I go!
I haven't personally experienced what I would call a blizzard, but the one that I always heard about growing up was the blizzard of 1978. In Dayton, well south of lake-effect-snow area, there was over a foot of snow, wind chills of -60ºF (-51ºC) below zero, and gusts of wind gusts averaging 50-70 miles per hour (70-110 kmph). The main east-west highway across the northern part of the state closed for two days, and the barometric pressure was the lowest ever recorded in the central U.S.
Right about in the middle of all that was Ohio's largest ski area. It's no Alp, but I agree with Valka - only someone with a death wish would have been going out skiing in those conditions.
Other than that, the only "blizzard" I remember hearing about is the 1950 one, famous for the "Snow Bowl" football game, where there were two inches of snow falling per hour, but the gusts were only up to 28 miles per hour. Sleddable? Probably on a familiar hill. Skiable? Maybe on a familiar slope, although those winds might be pushing it. Reports indicate that visibility was roughly 38 yards (35 meters), so you could still see where you were going if you were traveling slowly enough.
So it probably depends on whose definition of "blizzard" it is. If the Swiss considered it a blizzard, I'd personally be staying inside. weather.gov defines it thusly:
How does that impact the best area to live? Personally, I don't think I'd enjoy living in the parts of the U.S. where the snow doesn't melt till mid-April and "blizzards" (by stricter definitions, including white-outs) are common. Those areas are pretty rare - maybe the uppermost parts of New York (Watertown?), and the upper parts of the Rockies, and if you love skiing, maybe those long ski seasons make it worth it. But I understand why, for most people, those are vacation destinations.
Now just a plain-old heavy snow storm? Sure, and freshly-falling natural snow is great for skiing. But I want to be able to see where I go!
I haven't personally experienced what I would call a blizzard, but the one that I always heard about growing up was the blizzard of 1978. In Dayton, well south of lake-effect-snow area, there was over a foot of snow, wind chills of -60ºF (-51ºC) below zero, and gusts of wind gusts averaging 50-70 miles per hour (70-110 kmph). The main east-west highway across the northern part of the state closed for two days, and the barometric pressure was the lowest ever recorded in the central U.S.
Right about in the middle of all that was Ohio's largest ski area. It's no Alp, but I agree with Valka - only someone with a death wish would have been going out skiing in those conditions.
Other than that, the only "blizzard" I remember hearing about is the 1950 one, famous for the "Snow Bowl" football game, where there were two inches of snow falling per hour, but the gusts were only up to 28 miles per hour. Sleddable? Probably on a familiar hill. Skiable? Maybe on a familiar slope, although those winds might be pushing it. Reports indicate that visibility was roughly 38 yards (35 meters), so you could still see where you were going if you were traveling slowly enough.
So it probably depends on whose definition of "blizzard" it is. If the Swiss considered it a blizzard, I'd personally be staying inside. weather.gov defines it thusly:
How does that impact the best area to live? Personally, I don't think I'd enjoy living in the parts of the U.S. where the snow doesn't melt till mid-April and "blizzards" (by stricter definitions, including white-outs) are common. Those areas are pretty rare - maybe the uppermost parts of New York (Watertown?), and the upper parts of the Rockies, and if you love skiing, maybe those long ski seasons make it worth it. But I understand why, for most people, those are vacation destinations.
I think many people see them similarly to Native Americans. The Amish are good at what they do and have a pretty solid reactionary and backward culture. Straw hats, black suits and funny beards. The women so prim and proper. I'm glad they enjoy their lifestyle community values. US tribes also look to be quaint and nostalgic on the outside with all their stewardship of the land values and fancy public rituals. Tribal life is nothing like one would expect, especially in the traditional tribes. They are closer to the Taliban than to middle of the road Americans. Internal tribal life is nothing like the movies.
Voidwalkin
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Depends on the sect.
The Schwarzentrubers are all buggy. They wear all black. They don't even accept rides, so far as I know. The rest do.
There are some cultural differences. Some can be jarring.
As far as I can tell
1. Yeah there is indeed horsehocky everywhere
2. There is less taboo about staring in Amish culture. Much less. If you're in line at DG, the Amish ahead of you may turn around to stare, and so will the ones behind you. Directly, and unbroken. This creates some awkwardness.
3. Personal property is not as strong a line. If I go to the laundromat, there is a strong chance an Amish will take my clothes out of the dryer. Not to steal. They just want the dryer. They'll leave the clothes neatly folded on a table. Which is, alright, I guess. Whatever.
4. During covid, no masks, no distancing, didn't reduce crowd sizes. No covid denial amongst them so far as I could tell. Who lives, who dies, all considered the will of God. This extends further, to most illnesses and injuries.
5. No education. Believe it would promote social stratification.
6. Bishops have a much more active role. They're mayor, labor organizer, arbiter of disputes. All the functions of government essentially rolled into one man. In some sects, bishops even approve brands available for purchase - at whim, they can determine that the members of their sect don't buy Nichols bread(coworker always complained about this)
They also really like baseball. Amish baseball games are really common.
Narz
keeping it real
Like the Taliban say what?
I've never once heard of native American terrorism in my lifetime.
And of all those American groups who love to air their grievences (one thing that seems to unite us all) Native Americans probably have the most excuse to do so.
My understanding is limited, at some point in my life I'd like to visit some reservations but my understanding is most of their struggles these days are internal ones (alcoholism, unemployment, despair) not outward hate and aggression.
That is only because you were not alive during the Indian Wars. If there was still some native inhabitants fighting for their land against colonists they would clearly be labelled terrorists.
Zardnaar
Deity
Tbf some of them would be. The army would be war criminals though.
The closest we have to Amish in this part of the country are the Hutterites, and I would not characterize them as "charming." I don't care what their cultural norms are - in a pandemic, when you're interacting with people outside the colony, you follow the same rules everyone else follows, and you get your damn shots. All it takes is one carrier to wander through a marketplace or store, sneeze or talk carelessly, and you've potentially affected dozens, even hundreds of strangers' lives.
In pre-pandemic times, I've had a couple of interesting encounters with Hutterite women.
One thing not mentioned about blizzards and wind is the fact that the wind blows the snow into drifts. Snow drifts can bury a car in a short time, and if you're in that car, you're in trouble. That's why people are told to have emergency kits in their vehicles if they have to travel on the highways in winter. Walking out to find help is a great way for someone to find your dead body months later, so you need a way to keep warm, you need emergency food and water, spare meds if you're on prescription drugs, flashlight, first aid kit, shovel, and a whole lot more.
Oh, and snow that doesn't melt until mid-April? Perfectly normal here.
Darsnan
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Watertown NY (which I grew up about 90 minutes north of, and so I've always considered Watertown more of a central New York location) is prone to Lake Effect snowstorms, which are another form of blizzard. Here is a pic I took in February 2019 during a Lake Effect event near Watertown:
This is Interstate 81, which is a 4 lane highway (or not so much during a lake effect event). The plows were doing their best just to keep one lane each direction open, and as you can see they weren't even trying to plow the exits. Later that day I-81 was closed for about 24 hours due to the persisting lake effect snow event.
That said, I'll take blizzards any day over weather like they have in Phoenix AZ: in May 2020 my wife was working on an Indian reservation south of Phoenix, and by 9am the temperature was already +47C: if your car broke down in the desert there you were gonna be in deep kimche in a short amount of time, and I knew if I didn't get my daily jog in by 7am then I might as well forget it and would have to stare at the 4 walls of our air b-n-b for another day. And temperature-wise it was like that pretty much every day in Phoenix, whereas after a blizzard I know that its gonna be great skiing once the roads are cleared.
D
Farm Boy
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I prefer horse leavings to fumes. Confinement operations get a little rank when the wind is wrong and they're cleaning pits or injecting, but I grew up around livestock farms and don't mind the smell of the manure spreader running. It's just poop. By next year it will be dirt, and the next yet your edamame.
People everywhere are people everywhere, don't see anything worse about the Amish than any others.
I do like county fairs. The livestock events are fun. Draft pulls are just something I don't run into anywhere else.
That doesn't really do the Comanche justice. They were horse lords par excellence for centuries.
Bestbank Tiger
Deity
stfoskey12
Emperor of Foskania
What I find interesting about Native Americans in Oklahoma is that there are relatively few true reservations in the state. However, the entire state was Indian Territory until 1889, and the eastern half of the state remained so until 1907. But then the Indian Territory got dissolved when the state of Oklahoma was created in 1907. While not true reservations, the tribal nations still have some jurisdiction over their territories in the eastern part of the state. You will see the different tribal nations you enter on highway signs and some maps show the boundaries. Yet these regions are only about 15-20% Native American demographically, and there has been a lot of intermarriage between whites and Native Americans. So it is interesting as being an area with a large indigenous population but not a reservation, and where that population is not segregated from everyone else.
Terrorism is not the aspect of the Taliban I would apply to any tribes. The internal social structures and attitudes, clan life, membership issues and how they treat their own members are all far more aligned with ultra conservative ideas than one would think. None of that is connected to how they were treated by white people. Tribes with casinos have managed to get their payback many times over.
Narz
keeping it real
Was trying to find this thread to show my gf and accidentally found & sent her one from 21 years ago https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/nice-inexpensive-places-to-live-in-the-u-s.46905/
I actually recognize a few of those names, though I don't think they've been active for a long time now.
