Where I grew up, the main concern was that snow piled up quickly during heavy storms. Most people knew how to deal with it and would be fine, but the incompetent people (who to be very clear aren’t always new to the area…) made things extremely dangerous for everyone else. Doesn’t matter if you’re an expert at driving in the snow if some asshat with worn out 3-season tires plows into you and injures you. But we had the infrastructure to withstand cold and snow, even if most of it was old and janky. The human aspect of it was a little messed up (plow drivers making min wage and working max legal hours, people being left to shovel 3-4ft of heavy plow walls in their driveway, etc) but they managed to deal with it. Core things like power and gas were mostly buried and kept working so you could stay warm at home, and homes were designed for temps well below freezing.
Long time ago I did experience a blizzard in Wyoming. Holy crap, like nothing else I’ve experienced. We literally couldn’t see the road 20 feet in front of us at times. You get snow-blind if you stare at it too long. We saw so many cars that had driven off the road on accident because they lost track of where the pavement was.
I live in Portland OR now, we don’t get many blizzards but our ice storms are rough. If we get snow people stay home if they can, it rarely lasts longer than a few days before it all melts.
It depends heavily on where you live.
Where I grew up, the main concern was that snow piled up quickly during heavy storms. Most people knew how to deal with it and would be fine, but the incompetent people (who to be very clear aren’t always new to the area…) made things extremely dangerous for everyone else. Doesn’t matter if you’re an expert at driving in the snow if some asshat with worn out 3-season tires plows into you and injures you. But we had the infrastructure to withstand cold and snow, even if most of it was old and janky. The human aspect of it was a little messed up (plow drivers making min wage and working max legal hours, people being left to shovel 3-4ft of heavy plow walls in their driveway, etc) but they managed to deal with it. Core things like power and gas were mostly buried and kept working so you could stay warm at home, and homes were designed for temps well below freezing.
Long time ago I did experience a blizzard in Wyoming. Holy crap, like nothing else I’ve experienced. We literally couldn’t see the road 20 feet in front of us at times. You get snow-blind if you stare at it too long. We saw so many cars that had driven off the road on accident because they lost track of where the pavement was.
I live in Portland OR now, we don’t get many blizzards but our ice storms are rough. If we get snow people stay home if they can, it rarely lasts longer than a few days before it all melts.