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Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Snow Day 3

The kids were in the hallway, staring at the thermostat (which also can give you a 10-day forecast, among other cool tricks) and arguing about whether or not it was going to snow after all when Daddy hollered from his office (where he has a lovely view out the window, the most accurate weather forecast of all): "It's snowing!"

So we bundled up and went for a walk in the freshly falling snow.

Here's Rachel:


And Phoebe:


And Miriam and Rachel:


And me with Rachel and Miriam:


The other kids were walking separately from us. 

The snow was just starting to stick when we arrived home and we decided it would be a good day to practice driving in the snow. So that's what we did! 

Miriam went first (she was very unhappy that I made her reverse out of the parking spot):


But she did very well driving in the slick conditions (we just went around the block a couple of times—nothing too crazy):


I have been warned by locals both here in Georgia and up in North Carolina that the snow is "different" in the south; the ice is more "slippery." And while I appreciate their concern, I also call...hogwash. Snow is snow and ice is ice. And—having lived in a variety of northern regions—I feel I can say with some authority that ice is just as slippery in Calgary, Alberta, Salt Lake City, Utah, or Moscow, Russia, as it is in Atlanta, Georgia.

The difference, according to The Weather Channel is not so much that the conditions are somehow worse in the south (due to...whatever...ground temperature? humidity? I've heard several theories). It's the behaviour of the people that causes the issues:

Significant impacts often happen even though most of the time the snow and ice amounts are usually on the low side.

This is partly due to the infrequent nature of wintry episodes in the region. Motorists do not usually have much experience driving in winter weather and most areas do not have a large fleet of equipment to treat roadways.

Consequently, roads can become treacherous quickly, so it is necessary to be prepared for dangerous travel and the closure of businesses.

People spin out because they instinctively feel that pressing the accelerator will help them gain traction on the ice. The opposite is true. Slow movements are what we're after. Accelerate slowly, decelerate slowly, turn slowly. 


They're obsessed with salt here. That and plowing. It's like they've never heard of, like...sand.

First of all, a snowplow would not be sent out for the amount of snow we got today. It just wouldn't happen (snowplows require a minimum of two inches of accumulation to be deployed (one source of many here)). And if we're talking about snow and ice being different, consider that there are times salt isn't even considered in Alberta because it is too cold to be effective. From the city of Calgary
When road surfaces are below -5 C and expected to fall, we use a salt-sand mixture called pickle (3 per cent salt, 97 per cent fine gravel). The sand improves vehicle traction while the salt helps melt accumulated snow and ice as it warms up. 
When road surface temperatures are between 0 and -14 C and not expected to change, The City uses salt to melt accumulated snow and ice. 
When it's extremely cold, we use sand/pickle mix only for vehicle traction as salt is less effective in temperatures below -15 C.

To be clear, it's not that the ice is ineffective—the ice is still plenty slippery at those temperatures. It's the salt that is ineffective. Thus the, uh, sand and gravel (which also remains effective at low temperatures). So if you are slipping and sliding while trying to get down your neighbourhood roads (which largely remain unplowed in Calgary, by the way), you can throw out some kitty litter or sand or whatever and it will help you grip the ice.

Rachel did well driving in the snow as well. Her "Whoa-kay" at the stop sign indicated that she felt and appreciated the difference in braking on the snow...probably. 

I think it was probably good for them to get out there and drive in the snow. There's nothing objectively worse about the snow down here than up north (trust me). It's user-error. And lack of equipment. I get that.

I mean, plowing is one thing. And it's kind of a big thing for me because so often when people cry, "But we don't have enough snowplows!" I'm always like, "But this isn't even enough snow to plow and residential streets aren't always plowed up north, anyway!"

But...having winter gear at all is another thing. 

My own kids are dressed in a hodge-podge of winter stuff. They wear garbage bags and rain boots.

My friend in Texas posted a picture of her kids building a snowman...using gardening gloves on their hands...which is kind of genius, to be honest!

We won't even talk about how our friends in Florida are faring.

One reason I heard for school being cancelled was that it was simply too cold for children to be outside waiting for the bus. And that is absolutely true. While it's not all that cold, it is cold enough to be dangerous if you don't have the right clothing (and so many kids here don't have the right clothing for this kind of weather...and no means to get it because decent winter gear is hard to come by down here...the jackets that they sell are lighter weight, finding good insulated gloves is nearly impossible, they don't just have racks of snowsuits at Costco, okay?). It really is dangerous for kids to be out in this weather underdressed. 

And it really is pointless to sell winter stuff down here. 

So...the solution is cobbling together snow stuff and staying inside otherwise.

Our house isn't well insulated, so we leave some taps dripping at night to prevent them from freezing and bursting. We won't talk about how better insulation would help the house in the winter and summer (that doesn't seem to have occurred to the building codes down here). They choose not to insulate well because it's unnecessary...so...yeah...we leave our taps dripping.

But all those things are human behaviours that have nothing to do with the seriousness of the snow event. I'm just saying...

And I think that's perfectly fine. I know when heat waves hit up north they just don't even know how to handle things either, whereas in the south we have a few tricks. That's just the way it goes.

Anyway, here's Zoƫ showing off her lovely scarf again:


Here's Phoebe licking the electrical box. Gross.


Our neighbour (from up north—Michigan, I believe) was more concerned about her licking a metal box in these temperatures than she was about the ick factor. But Phoebe's tongue was fine, lucky girl.


This neighbour said that another issue is that some buses aren't heated down here. I remember making frost pictures on the window glass as a kid (and sitting quite bundled up on the bus). I think it just takes time to heat a bus, honestly. Like, if the heater is up by the driver...it's not going to warm the back of the bus any time fast. But the kids are typically all bundled up to get on the bus anyway, so it's not a big deal for them to ride to school in the cold...scraping pictures and messages into the frost with their fingernails. Unless, of course, they live here and don't have snow gear coming out their ears. Then they're just cold.

Oh, I was going to tell a story about how my friend Rob Dupuis once licked a school bus in the dead of winter. It was not good news for his tongue.

Could that really happen, you ask? Here's a story about a little boy who got his tongue stuck on the bus window. And here's a story about a kid who licked a pole (you don't need hot water to get your tongue free—and, lady, even if they did need hot water and you didn't have any, surely you have a stove or a microwave...it's not like anyone stores hot water (except, you know, in one's hot water tank)—you just need...water-water). 

I remember playing a game at my friend Emily Loos's neighbour's house when I was younger. It involved some benign dares. It was a board game of sorts that was popular. I can't remember what. 

Anyway, I had to stick an ice cube in my mouth. And the ice cube froze to the inside of my mouth and I panicked (I was younger than 8 when this happened and it was scary) and the mom in the house had me drink some regular, ordinary tap water and everything was just fine. 


In sum, we've enjoyed yet another snow day. Tomorrow is a snow day as well!

This is probably the most snow days we've had in Georgia in one season!

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