Snow is snow is snow, except when it isn’t
Do you run to the front porch when the tornado alert sounds? Do you rush to the grocery store when flurries are predicted? Where you live colors your perception of the weather, and in the handful of wildly different places I’ve lived, there’s been no shortage of amusing weather-related experiences.
Growing up in Holyoke, I thought I was exposed to weather extremes. Both 100+ and subzero days are routinely taken in stride. In 2018, for example, temperatures ranged from a low of -14 in January to a high of 102 in June. Living in Massachusetts and then Texas, however, made me re-evaluate what I thought were extremes. In 2011, I was fed up with walkways lined with a couple of feet of accumulated snow that wouldn’t melt for weeks. From there, I unwittingly moved to north Texas in the middle of a record-breaking heat wave. Temperatures exceeded 100 for 71 days that summer, and I longed for the “extremes” of northeast Colorado.
On the other hand, the weather extremes of places like Dublin, Ireland, are quite tame. Throughout most of the year, temperatures stay within a 30-degree range of about 36-66. But I also happened to move to Dublin when weather records were being broken. 2010 marked the coldest January that Dublin had seen in 45 years. When I flew in, buses weren’t running, tours were canceled and the news proclaimed that the country had run out of salt for the roads. It was a crisis.
Now let me tell you what it really looked like. Traveling from the airport to the hostel I stayed in for the first few days, the road had a bit of slush. We passed a thermometer that read 5, and for a moment I worried about the “extreme cold spell” I’d gotten myself into. Then I remembered that 5 C translates to 41 F, and I internally scoffed. Business would carry on as usual in Colorado, and Massachusetts would hardly even register the dusting of snow Dublin saw that day.
That’s when I truly realized that an inch of snow isn’t just an inch of snow. In Ireland it meant unprepared people were trying to clear their sidewalks and driveways with brooms they had around the house. In Texas it meant everyone rushing to the store ahead of time to buy up all the water, bread and beer they could get their hands on.
Likewise, a foot of snow isn’t just a foot of snow. In Holyoke, it would almost certainly mean a day off from school. In Massachusetts, I never had a single class canceled due to snow, even when several inches had fallen. I can tell you, it caused some strife when I had to strap on ice cleats to make it to class while my best friend got an extra week off in Arkansas because of a few snow flurries.
In Massachusetts, plows hit the streets — and the sidewalks — in the middle of the night, so traveling was a breeze when morning came. Even so, peers from Chicago were shocked that Massachusetts was apparently trailing Chicago significantly in its ability to handle snow.
So snow isn’t just snow; it can mean entirely different outcomes depending on preparedness. I suppose attitude makes a difference, too. In the years that I lived in Texas, I was awoken countless times by the kids I cared for yelling, “It snowed!” What you and I might recognize as frost on the grass was seen as a magical snowfall to those little ones. They were thrilled to try to make a snowman out of the frost, and when an ice storm hit, they were ready to try sledding on it. Part of me was sad to see their pitiful attempts at snowmen and sledding without real snow, but on the other hand, it was sweet to see them making the most of what they had.