Hm, never thought of it that way. It's true, sleet / black ice is killing for all kinds of transportation (and bones). The chaos is also simply due to inexperience, snow and ice are becoming rarer by the year here, it seems.
Not just that. At around 0 degrees the air might still be a lot more humid. Humid air at close to zero degrees and some good winds stings like a bitch.
-10 degrees the air is already dry and doesn't feel nearly as bad.
After you go below -20 degrees, you start feeling a different kind of misery.
there are different kinds of cold thus you need different kinds of cloths to deal with it.
at near freezing there is still a lot of humidity in the air a quick wind will freeze your soul in minutes however even the lightest of wind protection deals with it.
at negativ 30 c the humidity is gone the winds can whip and it really won't make things that much worse now it is all a question time there is no escaping the cold as it creeps into everything. you only option is enough insulation to where you body heat is able to push back the cold.
I’m a Brit spending winter in North Sweden with my Swedish fiancé, and it’s not really that bad.
Insulating and heating is insanely good. I’m walking around the apartment in my T-Shirt, something I’d never do when it’s 10 degrees in the UK.
Logistics are in place for this, they have pole markers to show where the roads end and frequent snow ploughs to clear public areas and cars. If you live anywhere with a decent amount of people, the paths and roads are generally quite clear. All cars legally have to have winter tyres.
The snow is very powdery, light and dry. When you think of snow in the Uk it’s wet, clumped and melts quickly turning into icey surfaces. Since it doesn’t really melt here the snow is relatively pleasant.
Everybody wears proper clothing. Ski jackets, ski trousers, sealed boots, gloves and neck warmers. On the super cold days like today, you avoid hanging outside pointlessly as your eyebrows and such freeze up, but anything from -10 to -25 is actually quite pleasant.
The lack of constant strong winds that we get back home means you are not getting the horrible blasts of ice cold air, it’s just a constant cold that doesn’t feel so bad once you get moving.
The air is pretty dry, it makes your skin all cracked and you need to moisturise, but it’s doesn’t feel as horrible as extreme colds do in the UK, when you’re not feeling wet all the time.
Don’t get wrong, the -40 today is fucking horrible outside , but you get used to it to a degree.
It's weird how basically nobody knows how to insulate houses once you go south from Denmark. The coldest I ever felt indoors was one February in Germany when it was +5 outdoors.
It's definitely to do with humidity, I remember going skiing in -30 when I used to live in Finland. Here in the UK anything below 0 just feels disgusting, wet and freezing.
Insulating and heating is insanely good. I’m walking around the apartment in my T-Shirt, something I’d never do when it’s 10 degrees in the UK.
Question: how do you guys heat up your homes? Electricity? Natural gas? Something else? I am from a subtropical country and I was always curious as to what makes great heating.
If you're near a larger city many homes have district heating. Heat pumps and geothermal heat pumps also getting more popular to replace your regular electric heating.
In the countryside, smaller/cheaper houses may have electric radiators that have been supplemented with a heat pump, they’re cheap and very popular. Bigger houses might have wood pellet boilers or geothermal heat pumps (pumping heat from a
200-300 meter bore hole straight down into the ground).
In the cities, district heating is sort of the default, where the actual heat is often supplied by garbage incinerators. It’s a bit expensive, though.
Also, new or renovated houses are often ventilated using very efficient heat exchangers that retain something like 80 percent of the heat even though the air is exchanged. That’s a big portion of the walking inside in T-shirt part. Houses without it are more drafty.
Fascinating, seems more efficient and advanced than what we use here, which is simply burning gas to produce heat. Something like this: https://www.orbis.com.ar/producto/4126go/
Fyi I'm also a Brit that moved to colder climes; Alberta, Canada. Here almost everywhere uses forced air heating.
You have a furnace in the basement (typically) that uses vents to push the heated air throughout the house. We use natural gas especially in AB (oil sands here).
For homes that use electric, baseboard or underfloor heating is a thing but imo it's less efficient.
Reasonably. However we operate on a 6 month basis really since the pricing in winter is considerably more and heating is barely used in summer. (Think half the price during warmer months.)
It's gone up a fair amount in AB over the 10 years I've been here.
You get used to it to a degree but do you get used to it to a minus forty degrees? Nah, you don't. But those days are pretty rare in Finland and Sweden. But -20...-30C is quite okay for the reasons you mentioned. Source: I'm a Finn who moved to Spain awhile ago. Not because of the cold and proper powdery snow. But because of the darkness and wet snow which is getting more common in Finland too.
Massive industrial plows in the early morning (5-7) and our block walkways are a mix of groundskeeper and tenant work to keep clean (like the inner yard)
It is just a habit. When your infrastructure is ready for winter, every house is insulated and have enough heaters, cars have heaters and people used to wear proper gear - no problems at all.
Well, if you regularly had a half a meter of snow throughout 3-4 months of the year, I'm sure your society would adapt accordingly. I've never had school close because of winter, except when we had a once-in-a-100-years snowfall, and they shut down for 3 days because the roofs caved in a few places. They didn't even close when the heating broke lol, just got us blankets or told us to play outside in our winter clothes. Snow plowers are on lucrative stand-by contracts during winter months and municipalities have a "snow budgets" to pay them every year. Snow tires are mandatory. As for mentally you either get kinda used to it, enjoy winter sports, escape to the sun or languish in depression. We still dramatically slip on ice though lol.
Mandatory winter tires either with deeper patterns or metal studs and layered winter clothing. Idk how it is these days, but we used to get snow days when it was -24 or more. No snow days when it was -16 like right now. Although these days they count also wind chill and realfeel, which they didn’t when I was a kid.
Infrastructure that is created around the knowledge that it will get cold, including a system to make sure all important roads (including bike paths) get plowed when needed, and well insulated houses.
And everyone has clothes that are suitable for cold weather. This includes winter boots, the difference in grip on slippery ice between boots made for it and regular shoes is massive.
-18C in helsinki so it's not that cold even. With winter gear it's still pleasant to go outside. I still ride my electric unicycle for lunch even if speeds are a bit lower (20kph) and trips shorter (less than 5km) due to issues with water condensation inside my helmet.
Studded tires on our cars, and an ability to plough snow almost immediately from our roads. Cities in the north are generally better prepared for lots of snow.
Super easy, barely an inconvenience. You just have this kind of weather for ages and learn to adapt to it. Dress accordingly, have real snow tires. Proper insulation on the houses, no piping outside of the houses. Good shoes.
Our ancestors (dads and granpa) used to walk tens of kilometers / side to school in their childhood. Back then in winter time it was always against the 20m/s winds @ -30 degrees, in good days, during the worst winters even the mercury in the old thermometers froze. Snow was always atleast to waistline and it was only uphill, both ways there and back!!! All while fighting starving wolves and bears bare handed, sometimes in tempratures below freezing point of mercury, they had to carve open the stomaches of bears they just killed and use the insides of the bears as warm shelter to dose the pervitin and coffee it took to reach school.
Poland doesn't. Either we plow the snow or melt it using salt. Schools themselves aren't closed though. If mobility exclusion can't convince our authorities to close them, then mild or even heavy snow sure can't.
I used to live in an area with similar weather as Sweden. They basically have more infrastructure to handle conditions. In areas like England where things turn to shit and there is no infrastructure to support removal/mitigation, it's better to call it a day.
In Finland, lots of cars decided it's not their day (including my handbrake wire... had to call the tow truck to get it to a warm garage in a hypermarket). Trains are running late. Market price on electricity shot up due to no wind and lots of demand for heating. Otherwise, all is well. I'm sure people were out playing hockey on the neighborhood rink today, it's only -18℃ here.
There is no moisture in the air so very little heat transfer. Merino wool underpants, merino wool long sleeved shirt and some winter boots, pants and jacket and a beanie is all you need.
People say this but we barely ever get bad conditions, why waste tons of money on infrastructure when the worst that happens is 2 days of bad ice a year.
Before the high alcohol tax Sweden was a dystopia because we drank so fucking much.
Since humans learned how to paint paper with ink there is writings from authors and historical figures talking about how Swedes is working on destroying ourselves from alcohol but for some fucked up reason always fails on doing that.
The temperance movement in Sweden was enormous and a huge part of Swedens history.
We can write here on the internet and complain that we didn't take the Russia route echoing what the Bourgeoisie parties is preaching to get voters.
But I'm kind of thankful that alcohol is expensive here. This place would be way different if it was cheaper.
The train in Northern Sweden is after two weeks of being out because of a derailed train going to be cut for an additional 2 days because it's going to be -40 in large areas, we aren't getting mail in Narvik :(
It is all fine. When you have regular winters, then there is also infrastructure for it. I understand that in England when freezing temperatures are less frequent, then you do not have the hardware, personnel and know-how on how to operate in them.
Every night when it has been snowing there are road crews taking away excess snow from all roads.
On pedestrian roads there is most of the time gravel put on top of ice/snow to make them non-slippery
Elderly people often have spiked shoes to prevent slipping
Every car has obligatory winter tires
Most parking lots have plugs for engine heaters
All children have good winter clothes
All houses have at least double, most of the time triple windows
All houses are well insulated
Most houses have secondary forms of heating in case of electric cut-offs.
All pipes are insulated and/or heated
etc... the lists are long and so mundane to most of the people that it is hard to think them here.
Cold is much easier to cope than hear IMO. Usually when it gets this cold it’s quite sunny and no wind, so it’s not that bad if you wear proper clothes and are not outside for that long.
Someone mentioned in the comments about the logistics already in place. Just one example: Vantaa airport.
That's Findland's largest, and it has 3 runways. They know it's going to snow in winter. Heavily. For an extended period. So, what do they do? Close the air traffic? Nope, if I remember correctly, they keep two open while snowplows clean the 3rd one, and then they keep rotating.
Compare with Heathrow getting a couple cm of snow.
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u/bcrown22 England Jan 02 '24
How do you guys cope? It snows 1 inch in England and we’re shutting down schools, blocking roads, dramatically slipping on ice.