Try spending three straight winters in North West Saskatchewan, waking up to -45 degrees (Farenheit) at 5:00 AM for the past three winters. That puts some hair on your nuts pretty quick. That being said, I'd rather deal with snow than endless rain. That's one of the few things about growing up on the West Coast (Vancouver) that I don't miss.
You don't smash their face in the snow to make them cry. You stuff handfuls of snow down the back of their neck.
I went to high school in Connecticut, and played softball games in the snow in March (not something I miss), and yet I still love the shit out of the snow every single time. However.. I currently live in Mississippi, where it's snowing for the first time in forever. This is pretty exciting, but if you think driving in the snow in places like Wisconsin is bad, try driving when people have never seen snow before, much less driven in it. Everybody and their 84 cousins pile into their crappy ass truck and drive around looking at the "purty snow" that they've never seen before. Nobody focuses on the fact that they've also never DRIVEN in snow before, and so while they're all distracted, I'm bobbing and weaving in my car trying to avoid their dumb asses and waiting until they put their car in the ditch. Plus no towns around here own snow plows or even have salt trucks, so that shit stays slick until it melts.
This is the exact problem with snow. Not to call you out specifically but this line of logic has always just pissed me off. As sure as snow is white you will get every single person on earth saying the exact same thing, "Everyone but me sucks a fat cock at driving in the snow, it's like theyve never seen a snowflake before GAWD!" According to everyone you talk to they are the Jeff Gordon of snow driving and everyone else sucks. I'm willing to bet a substantial proportion of snow accidents occur because people are overconfident in their snow driving abilities and slip the fuck off the road.
Hah try driving a RWD V-8 in a snow town. I know I can't go fast, stop quickly, or hell, negotiate a turn in the damn car if there's so much as a snowflake on the ground. Yet I'll still get assholes riding my bumper (on a 4 lane highway...). Since it's an older car, I usually just floor it, causing the ass end to slide out some, and that usually gets them off my ass. Great excuse for arriving late/taking a half day at work though.
There is some truth that if you drive in snow regularly you're better at it than people who get a freak storm every five years or so. I think the mindset is the difference. When I've been down South during storms the general consensus was that every traveler felt a panic to get off the road as quickly as possible making them actually drive worse than they normally do. As a New Englander I just accept that the snow has doubled my commute time and drive in my normal fashion, albeit at a slower pace. However people have WAAAAAY to much confidence in their vehicles abilities in the snow around here. Every time there is a storm and we head up to the mountains in the morning we'll pass at least half a dozen SUVs that are spun off the road down in a ditch. People forget that snow is still slippery as shit and that the Ford Explorer they bought came with shitty all-season noise reduction tires that while nice and quite are that way because they have a tread pattern similar to the tires I run on my summer only sports car. Recently the weatherdolts have fucked us over with crazy predictions of a foot or more of snow for two weeks in a row that have amounted to jack squat. Fuckers.
It has snowed in Phoenix one time I can remember in the last 30 years, but what halts traffic and basically shuts things down is rain, people forget how to drive and it is chaos. People think they can drive through a flooded wash that is 3 feet deep and flowing at a pretty good clip and end up stranded and having to be rescued by a helicopter. It is funny to watch as the local news goes all weather all the time, reporting on the .125 of an inch of rain. Some days I miss snow, like yesterday when my feet got a little sunburned at the lake.
Ahh, snow. I moved out to Australia when I was 14 from London, England, and it's really the only climate-related thing I miss. Waking up to white gold across the city, sledding, snowball fights, and pelting the salt-truck with snowballs for trying to kill our fun and send us back to school.
My buddy and I were drinking friday night (the 5th) and saw on the Weather Channel that Baltimore was about to get shit on with up to 30" of snow. We happen to know that when it snows more than 15" anywhere south of Chicago, people lose their fucking minds. Not only that, but no one down south is equipped for such an occasion. So we loaded up my Bobcat and headed for the East coast. We worked around the clock clearing driveways, alleys, parking lots, and freeing peoples' cars for ridiculous amounts of cash money. Eight days later we drove back to Minnesota with bloodshot eyes and very fat wallets. Some observations I made while I was there: -Before it snows, everyone puts their wiper blades in the "out" position. Why? Are they afraid they might damage their wipers when they dig their car out? Do they think if their wipers freeze to the windshield it'll ruin them? This really puzzled me. -On the East coast (In Baltimore at least), when someone digs their car out and opens up a spot on the curb to park, it is customary in to leave a chair there while you're gone so no one takes your spot. This is a common thing all over the city. It's kind of a good idea, but why a chair? Who started that idea? Was it something that started with one neighborhood and spread throughout the city, or did someone think of it and spread the word? -Fucking salt. EVERYONE down there is fucking OBSESSED with salt. I've never had so much fucking salt caked on my vehicle before. Where I'm from, if there is a good amount of ice on the road, a plow truck will sprinkle a small amount in the middle of the road, and that pretty much takes care of it. Down there, plow trucks will keep making passes down the road spreading obscene amounts of salt until the entire width of it crunches under your tires and sparkles like a fucking diamond. There doesn't even have to be ice on the road. If there is a light amount of snow, they salt the piss out of it. If the road is wet, they salt the piss out of it. If the road is dry, but they heard it might snow, they salt the piss out of it. After the roads dry out, they're whiter than a fucking marshmallow. I can only assume that Maryland has a 9 figure salt budget. A hint: You only need salt when you want to melt existing ice. It only takes a light sprinkling of salt to melt a lot of ice. -Everyone owns an AWD/4WD vehicle, but no one knows how to operate one in more than 3" inches of snow. We were driving down the interstate with my pickup, pulling a trailer with the Bobcat on it. It was snowing, and there was about 2" of wet slush on the road (good thing they salted the living fuck out of it) and we were going about 65 mph, which was a comfortable speed for those conditions. People were driving 30 mph in their SUV's with the fucking flashers on. Really people? Really? I understand that I have more experience driving in that shit than they do, but 30 mph? Really? -I saw some people bust some serious ass shoveling snow after the storm. I saw whole neighborhoods get together and dig out every car on their street by hand. I saw more than one neighborhood get together and dig out their entire alley (holy shit). I also saw some serious laziness. A week after the first storm, about 50% of the cars parked along curbs hadn't been touched yet. After a week, the city/county/state plow trucks still hadn't plowed the non-snow emergency streets 2 paths wide. They were just cruising around spreading salt when it was 40 fucking degrees. Some streets hadn't even been touched. I dug out a few of them with my Bobcat, some people got together and dug them by hand. Maryland doesn't have many decent plow trucks, but that's no excuse for how slow they were getting things cleaned up. -No one down there owns a decent shovel. This is understandable, as the stores there just don't stock anything other than those piece of shit flat plastic ones. Those are only good for scraping off your driveway/sidewalk when there's 2" of snow. If you live in a southern state, get yourself a good aluminum scoop shovel. You might only use it a few times, but it will make life a lot easier when you have to dig yourself out.
I, and many of my friends, were headed to Jamaica for a wedding during this wintery hell. Most of us were coming out of Texas, and at least a half dozen to a dozen people had issues getting to Jamaica because of snow in Texas or Georgia. This was just something that nobody could plan for, and as such a few people had to miss the wedding. On the bright side though, I was able to make it out and spent most of my time on the beach or on the water.
I just spent $500 on new snow tires in December. So I decided to find a big ole' empty parking lot at 2 am and see if they were really worth the money. It was pretty fun until the police showed up. I got off with a warning. For the record. So worth the money. Focus: Snows pretty I guess. I was never allowed to go out and play in it though, being gimpy and all. So when it snowed, it wasn't that awesome for me. It just meant I got to spend more time inside doing nothing. I never got to go sledding or have snow ball fights, so I don't have that whimsical attachment to snow most people do.