Tell Me Why Snow is So Bad
 

I've lived my whole life in the South. I've only seen it snow on a handful of occasions and it melts quickly without any time to even build a snowman. It is apparent that many of the snowbirds flee to the South in the winter to escape the snow and cold. We are considering the villages but Florida is exactly the same weather I've lived in my entire life. I want to experience something different! I'd like to make snowballs, have a white Christmas, ride in a sleigh, build a snow fort and have to bundle up! I feel like I've missed out on a big part of being an Earthling! My husband did take me skiing once so I could see real snow but there was a heat wave and the snow wasn't falling! So, I want to know from any Northerners what it is that makes it so bad that no one wants to stay there for the winter. Give me some things to think about before we make the decision to move to the villages for good instead of heading up north to experience four seasons!

I love the snow, I go out after midnight and watch the snow fall. Sometimes there is lightning and the sky lights up with the beautiful snowflakes.

Fall is second with the trees ablaze with reds, yellow, orange, purple.

We keep our home up north to enjoy in the summers and I go back for some winter months.

Snow tires. Shoveling snow. Salt on roads bad for car paint. Shoveling snow. Heating bills. Driving on ice. Shoveling snow. Freezing while waiting for train or bus. Shoveling snow. Salting driveway. Those are the reasons I refused to ever live in snow as an adult. Snow is great to play in but stinks to live in, especially as we get older.

You said it all, and saved me the trouble, thanks.:bigbow:

When I went into the Navy, I had to go through an orientation course at Bethesda Naval Hospital. There I met another new officer from San Jose, CA who was being assigned to Brunswick Maine. Since I was being sent to the San Francisco Bay Area from my home in New England, we talked frequently about what to expect in our new homes.

Around Christmas, we got a card from him telling us how much they enjoyed their first White Christmas. Around Easter, we got another card asking “When does the snow go away?”. Didn’t have the heart to tell him.

Anyway, be careful what you wish for.

Suppose you have an important doctor appointment tomorrrow and you get 24 inches of snow? That doesn't happen in The Villages.

I may have a deal for you. If we manage to get moved to TV in the foreseeable future, we may very well still be stuck with our home up north. (I say stuck, my husband probably not so much). So while we're both in TV for the entire winter, maybe we can rent you our house up north during that time period and you can get your snow fix. In fact, if you want to experience fall too, no problem. We have a lovely tree lined street and beautiful woods behind our house.

Oh, did I mention I have great neighbors up here too? If they like you as much as they like us, they'll even invite you for holiday dinners.......:D

My husband made me edit to mention the nice large 2nd story solarium enclosed jacuzzi that we have at your disposal. It's really fun to be in that while the snow is falling.......preferably with wine on the side.

The above replies said it all. Spent my entire life in PA, saw 24" plus snows, so deep and heavy that roofs collapsed. Lost a set of relatively new tires due to rutted roads (32 days of below freezing weather and LOTs of black ice). I was lucky, no accidents in snow or on ice but a few close calls.

IMHO, rent a place up North for say 2 or 3 months, November to February, you will really appreciate TV afterwards.

PS I was in PA for almost 65 years, I had the neighborhood snow blower, I took the bus to work and I remember standing in -40 degrees waiting for that bus. I also have a lot of pictures of various snowfalls and good memories, but I would not go back.

I spent 49 yrs in and around Syracuse NY which averages about 125 inches a yr. which is about 30 more inches than Buffalo gets.. it's not just the snow and cold it's also the dreariness from the constant cloud cover.. you can go weeks without ever seeing the sun..

Yes it does - during storms. An appointment can be rescheduled. No sweat.

I am sure a lot of you hire gardeners year round. We hire snow plowers just for our driveway just for four months or so. Yes we use salt, and there are car washes to wash our cars. The only thing we do have to watch out for is ice, and we use cleats on our muck shoes. When it is too cold, we spend our time inside our comfortable house with a roaring fire in our fireplace. I indulge in indoor activities such as sewing, computing, trying out new recipes, reading, and art.

I am sure you spend a lot of time inside your house when it is too hot and humid to go outside.

Best of all, we get to enjoy the four seasons. We have something to look forward to and something to put behind us. We like some seasoning in our seasons.

Yes heating bills can be high. So can AC bills.

I lived for a certain time in Berchtesgaden (job-wise), Germany. Snow from September until April are a "normal", to drive up the hill (23%) every day with temperatures down to -45 Centigrade by 10-50 inches of snow gave me the lesson to prefer seeing snow through tv in TV.

Dear OP. There are no words. It is just an experience that you must experience. It’s exciting for sure.

Let us know what you think after you give it a try.

Good list............don't forget about getting older and SNOW = Falls. Hips, Wrists, Backs, Heads, Arms.

:pray:

And shoveling...never ending shoveling over and over and over driveway walks and roof like Groundhog Day

Catwoman, you might consider a city like Denver that can get a considerable amount of snow throughout the winter months but which usually melts within a few days.

I've lived in ND and MN where the snow stays for five months -- the fun of it starts to wear on you. Scraping ice and snow off your windshield after work or after parking to run errands isn't pleasant. Spending part of your lunch hour sitting in the car and running the engine if there are no plug-ins for the block heater. Having to install a block heater. Accidentally leaving a case of soda in your car and having half the cans freeze and explode. Slipping/falling on snow and ice. Sliding into parked cars while driving on snow and ice.

It's not cheap to outfit yourself for winter! Sweaters, coats, gloves, hats, boots, thermal underwear, muffler, snow shovel or blower, salt, etc. The windshield scrapers are cheap.

I have met people who have not seen snow, as well as people who had never seen an ocean. Seeing and playing in snow is fun....in the short term. However, I too agree with Rewitch's post. I will also add losing your heat and worrying about frozen pipes. We lived in Michigan and came home from vacation to find our house at 40 degrees and getting colder. Our furnace had failed and we couldn't get the plumber in until the next day.

I was telling someone that the happiest day of my life was when I sold my snowblower. My wife had a funny look on her face....I wonder why? :jester:

Oh, and when it is 30 below, this emoji doesn't shiver anywhere near enough to match how cold it is.....:cold:

They say a picture is worth a 1000 words.

https://media.angieslist.com/s3fs-pu...?itok=fJLNO8wz

https://accuweather.brightspotcdn.co...8.22.24-pm.jpg

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/MCFPE1/car...usa-MCFPE1.jpg

https://archive.sltrib.com/images/20...r_012317~0.jpg

https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6ftNFJv4V...0/IMG_7710.jpg

The Villages in January

http://happyvillager.com/wp-content/...ges-FL-Car.jpg

Based on 40+ years of experience, I much prefer taking a vacation during the dead of winter to the snow/cold and coming home to where it's warm...than the other way around.

It's only bad if you're a whimp:ohdear:

C'mon, you people are scaring off a possible future business prospect for me........:1rotfl:

Let's say you are with a bunch of friends and you need to make a beer run.
It doesn't matter if you are 20 or 70.

option 1--snow
option 2-no snow

which one is easier?

Actually salt only bad for the unpaint surfaces, the bubbling you see from the inside out.:duck:

Depends - does one of your friend's have a truck with a plow on the front?

no
Is that what it takes to buy a 6 pack?

Depends on the time :boxing2:

option 1 -- stores are open 24 hrs a day even during the snow
option 2 -- store close by 9:00

Snow is fun when you are young, are cold tolerant, and have good knees. Skiing used to be my favorite past time, but with my knee replacement (and another one in my future), those days are long gone. White fluffy snow is beautiful, but then the temperature gets warm during the day and freezes at night and it becomes dangerous ice. And shoveling, plowing, driving, salt, etc..... all are not a good thing. I tried to make my TOV name coldnomore, but it was already taken!

Snow is wet, messy, cold and turns from white to dirty gray. I have lived through winters where the sun did not shine for 2 weeks. Where the skies are gray and the snow is dirty. Where it is so cold, that your car does not heat up for the first 10 minutes. I have driven to work in the dark and driven home in the dark at 4:00pm. In 32 years of work I have had one snow day. Snow is fun for kids. When there are big fluffy snowflakes falling it looks pretty but those big fluffy flakes probably happen twice a winter.

We lived outside of Cleveland Ohio for 34 years. If snow was that bad, we wouldn't have lasted that long. When our children were in school and we were working, winter passed quickly and we didn't mind it. We looked forward to the blizzards and snow events and the unusually cold weather (minus 25 degrees was the coldest). We just got out the Chinese checkers, Monopoly and Scrabble and played marathon rounds of each game. We lived next to a park where the rangers would build fires in barrels at the top of the sledding hills. Sledding went on day and night, probably 9 am to midnight. As adults, our kids always went sledding on Christmas Eve and Christmas day, when there was snow. Even after they married, they all went to the park to sled. But they all moved away, we retired and the winters began to be something we dreaded. Mostly, we dreaded the long gray days and the gray Lake Erie to match. In 2007 I said, "I don't think I can look at the gray sky and the gray lake all winter". We left for Florida soon after and visited everyone who had ever said, "Come for a visit". And that was the year we discovered The Villages.

No heart attacks shoveling sunshine.
 

Slips and falls with injuries to wrists, arms, backs and heads. Car crashes on clear ice on roadways that snow tires cannot handle. Traffic jams that stretch for miles when a semi-tractor jack-knifes. Heart attacks brought on by shoveling snow. Days that are so cold that heat pumps cannot keep up and even the "emergency heat" setting on the thermostat is ineffective. Head and chest colds. Grey, bleak, overcast days that cast a pall on your mood as the once-white snow on the ground turns to a dirty grey slush from urban air pollution.

When I moved from Maryland back to Florida, I left three things sitting in the middle of my garage. Two snow tires and a snow shovel.

Snow is nice. But after 60 years of it, Florida is a nice change.

Oh let me list the ways.....snow can begin in late Oct. and stay til April. Ice is THE worst along with the frigid cold. Fear of falling comes right behind this!!!! We had 3 record snow-fall winters in a row in our midwestern state....over 100"....prior to our move here. It was REALLY bad up there, from what I hear this past year!!

It got tiresome to have to rise early to blow and shovel the walks and driveway before work only to have the job all over again after getting home. Driving in it is tiresome and many times dangerous. It's pretty for sure but once one ages----doing the "fun" stuff isn't so fun anymore. We'd rather shovel sun!!

I would nicely say to the OP that you are probably not Villages material .. Like one of the other posters, I grew up in Syracuse, went to college in Rochester NY and then moved "south" to the Binghamton / Endicott NY area, where I got only 2/3 of the snow that the first two cities received .. 88 inches / year at the time .. Also had a work gig that took me through the Catskills regularly.

My wife is tired of me telling folks that the day I had the biggest smile on my face is when I gave my brother my 7.5 HP John Deere snowblower .. That;s when I moved to Atlanta .. I actually like seeing blue skies and daffodils in February .. If you still like shoveling, stay put .. there is nothing wrong with that .. Someone has to stay back and turn out the lights

I think that Syracuse natives and/or long term residents are recognized experts on snowfall. According to Wikipedia, Syracuse averages over 123 inches of snow each year. That's over ten feet for those of you who are math deficient. And if you go fifty miles north to Redfield NY, they average over 350 inches a year (in December over 62 inches fell in 48 hours). I suggest that if you need a tutorial on what's bad about snow, spend a winter in Central NY. I think that only then will you know. I retired in 2012 and fled to Florida to escape the Central NY winters (never mind the calendar - they start in November and end in March or April). Needless to say, I love the Florida winters.

I'm from Michigan and I would like snow a lot better if it were cold and didn't get more than 4 inches deep.

I would suggest you become a reverse snowbird and go to Michigan for your vacations in Jan or Feb. You will get your fix you need.

Only when I worked on commercial HVAC did I truly hate snow and ice. The tool of business was a shovel to get to the unit on the ground or roof. If it wasn't a flat roof I'd have to harness to the equipment.

Not sure what you are thinking
 

I am an ex-NEW YORKER.
I went to college in SYRACUSE. SNOW? They get 120 inches of snow per average year. THAT IS 10 FEET.
Imagine the winter. What is the weather today? Answer SNOW. I was out once and it was TWENTY BELOW ZERO.
That can be life threatening. As you breathe you can feel the mucus in your nose freezing.

Perhaps, like our heat. Snow is pretty IF, YOU DO NOT NEED TO GET TO WORK OR WORK OUTSIDE.

A walk down the beach in a snow storm- I do miss it-A LITTLE.

This says it all

That’s what I was trying to say! You said it way better.

:bigbow:

I think that has a lot to do with it. I have been noticing on this thread that those who are saying how much they dislike it also add on that it's because of HAVING to go out in it for one reason or another, and the driving aspects. It is without a doubt beautiful to watch a fresh snowfall from the inside out and then going out and enjoying the absolute silence that can result, especially after a heavy snowfall and no one is out yet.

Having said all of that, I could do without it. But I grew up in the mountains where I experienced a lot of snow and nary a problem getting around because we knew better how to deal with it and there were fewer people and obstacles to get around to clear the way. Now that the weather has shifted, I'm experiencing heavy snow in the city and suburbs.....not as much fun and much more difficult to deal with. We'll see if I miss it but I doubt it.

Heat and humidity can start April 1st and stay until mid-November.