How's your weather?

[Hinotori]

Were nomally just wet here. Freezes at night for a month. Snow every year or two. We had snow already this winter so we'll see if we get more in January.

I like our normally mild temps even if it is lots of drizzle and grey skies

 

[milkmansdaughter]

@Hinotori, that's what we expect here too... An occasional inch of snow, maybe at the end of January...

 

[sumi]

A friend of mine was in Alabama earlier this week and told me about the snow and the locals' reaction to it! lol

We got a little bit more this morning, after a mostly clear and absolutely freezing night. Much of what fell yesterday is still on the ground.

 

[frustratedearthmother]

Geeze - crazy snow! Love your snowman and the little cutie holding him up, lol!

 

[Miss Lydia]

Never have understood why people get out and drive when it's snowing and icy?
They do it here too.

 

[NH Homesteader]

Well, it's either that or stay home from December through February. I thought it was weird when we lived in CT that they shut down the state for storms... NH doesn't shut down unless you work at a school!

 

[Hinotori]

We only get shut down if the ice is bad enough you can't get up and down the hills. There are a lot of hills here. The ground drops quite quick from the mountains to the sound. Seattle and Tacoma are hilly enough that a manual car is torture in the summer.

Growing up on the east side of the mountains, we usually got freezing rain more often than snow. Two hour delays were the norm for new precipitation so they could chain up. They would try and drive a bus up the hill between Umatilla and McNary. If it couldn't get up, school was cancelled. Rarely was the ice bad enough that everything got shut down. Too much risk of cars sliding off the bridges into the Columbia or Umatilla Rivers.

In the 89-90 winter we dropped to -20 and 45mph winds for days. That was unusual cold for us. 0 was normal. Waiting for the bus sucked. School sucked because the main building was second hand structures bought off the army and at the most a room had a couple baseboard heaters. Water would freeze on the teachers desk. We did lessons with everyone on the floor against the heaters. The original school building had boilers and radiators so those classes were decently warm.

I'll take the cold over the heat though

 

[NH Homesteader]

They used to be tougher about school cancellations. But when I was in high school a foreign exchange student was killed on the way to school with a friend because the roads were ice. They've been more careful since then. Plus the flatlanders from Mass and CT are trying to take over NH so everyone's getting a little wimpier. Oops.... Did I say that?

 

[sumi]

@Hinotori I can't imagine that (school). I got a text around noon from DS's school letting us know the boiler has a major issue, so they can't heat the school and we can collect our kids if we want to. I was quite busy and decided to go in at the usual time to get him. There was about 5 pupils left out of over a 100. Everyone else went home early on account of the lack of heat and it was not that cold here today (about 35F)

 

[Hinotori]

Small school in farming community. We wore pantyhose and long johns under our jeans. Even the guys. Most of the guys had pantyhose for football anyway. Layers for warmth. We could deal with cold.

The 100-110° F temps at beginning and end of year sucked as their was no AC. Only building that was livable was the old original building that was designed to deal with it. High ceilings and a set of windows above the big lower windows. Windows ran the entire wall. Curtain pulled closed on lower windows and upper windows tilted open. Lights were always off in classroooms because they made heat.

They built a new school a couple years after I graduated.

These are mild compared to the horror stories Mom has when she was a kid in the next town over. Though most of her stories deal with how her friends grew up at home. Very poor families. My grandparents were poor, but many families were even worse. Rickety old trailer houses with no heat to deal with high desert winters. That also meant no water.