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The Weather Outside is... What?
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tejas’s request based on fic writers making stupid assumptions, a brief rundown of the different weather patterns where I live and some basic info on how to survive them.
Rundown for Minnesota:
I'll start with Winter because that's what most people expect anyway.
Snow is cold. Ice is cold. If the snow (not just the compacted ice beneath the snow) is hard enough to walk on without sinking into it, most likely the temps are cold enough to obtain frostbite on any exposed skin relatively quickly. No, a warm coat is not going to cut it. Coat, hat, earmuffs/earband, scarf, and gloves are essential. You wear layers under that of shirts and sweaters, tights or long underwear, possibly a pair of socks or two, and if you are over the age of 16, you don’t bitch about the boots. Your scarf will get both wet and frozen with the condensation from your breath and possibly the water running down from your eyes, but it’s better than the painful freezing feeling in your lungs when you try to breathe without it when it’s 15 below zero, not calculating in the wind chill factor that brings the apparent temps down even further. At those temps, a single gust of wind can cause skin damage.
Don’t be stupid – avoid touching metal with wet objects including, but not limited to, your tongue, fingers, sock-clad feet, non-sock-clad feet (that was just moronic and he has the missing toes to prove it), etc.
Lakes do not freeze overnight. See the news report I linked to a few days ago – they might get a thin layer, but not enough to hold any substantial weight for quite a while. You will sink and the water underneath is cold enough to give you pretty much instant hypothermia, making your limbs too sluggish to pull your way up to the surface. The lakes do, however, thaw quicker than you may expect, as evidenced by the ice houses at the bottoms of many of them.
No, Minnesota is not permanently cold, nor do we have permanent snow. We do not walk everywhere in snowshoes (I don’t even own any) and we do not use snowmobiles to get around (again with the not owning). Chains on your tires are no longer illegal everywhere, but no one uses them in the main cities, so tough it out and learn to drive. We are as modern as anywhere else, with the exceptions of some small towns in the middle of nowhere with only one cell tower and only modems instead of DSL.
In the Spring, all the snow needs to melt and the ground is too frozen to handle it all, thus we get floods. Floods are wet. Do not attempt to drive through the wet; that only leads to bad things. We have over 10,000 lakes and many rivers – go on, calculate just how much wet that is.
I won’t go into the whole boating thing other than to say we don’t all own boats but the majority of us do know that boating while consuming alcohol is in extremely bad, and extremely illegal, idea.
Summers are warm, and 100 + *F temps are not unheard of. Just because you are near water does not mean that you won’t get dehydrated. It means you have humidity to deal with too.
Tornado season is from May to September. Stay inside and away from the windows. Basements are good things. Cracking the windows of your house or car open a bit helps prevent a pressure build up that leads to broken glass. Do not go out wandering when the sirens go off and, should you be out when one hits, seek shelter immediately. They go through quickly, gaining speed across the plains. Their favorite targets are mobile homes and the deck that’s attached to your house. Yes, the eye is supposed to be calm, but remember that you would have to travel through the rest of it to get there. Yes, straightline winds can cause as much, if not more damage, and the same rules apply.
Fall is fricken gorgeous, but can have widely varying temps in a single day. I have gotten both heatstroke and hypothermia in the same day when the clouds broke and the rain came. Careful of your color scheme should you choose to go out and wander in this beauty – it’s hunting season.
And that would be a rough rundown of what to expect weather-wise in Minnesota. I have probably forgotten crap that other people consider important but, suffice it to say, use your common sense (should you have any) and you should be fine.
Edit: To amend the MN chains on tires statute - link to it in the comments as well.
tejas’s request based on fic writers making stupid assumptions, a brief rundown of the different weather patterns where I live and some basic info on how to survive them.Rundown for Minnesota:
I'll start with Winter because that's what most people expect anyway.
Snow is cold. Ice is cold. If the snow (not just the compacted ice beneath the snow) is hard enough to walk on without sinking into it, most likely the temps are cold enough to obtain frostbite on any exposed skin relatively quickly. No, a warm coat is not going to cut it. Coat, hat, earmuffs/earband, scarf, and gloves are essential. You wear layers under that of shirts and sweaters, tights or long underwear, possibly a pair of socks or two, and if you are over the age of 16, you don’t bitch about the boots. Your scarf will get both wet and frozen with the condensation from your breath and possibly the water running down from your eyes, but it’s better than the painful freezing feeling in your lungs when you try to breathe without it when it’s 15 below zero, not calculating in the wind chill factor that brings the apparent temps down even further. At those temps, a single gust of wind can cause skin damage.
Don’t be stupid – avoid touching metal with wet objects including, but not limited to, your tongue, fingers, sock-clad feet, non-sock-clad feet (that was just moronic and he has the missing toes to prove it), etc.
Lakes do not freeze overnight. See the news report I linked to a few days ago – they might get a thin layer, but not enough to hold any substantial weight for quite a while. You will sink and the water underneath is cold enough to give you pretty much instant hypothermia, making your limbs too sluggish to pull your way up to the surface. The lakes do, however, thaw quicker than you may expect, as evidenced by the ice houses at the bottoms of many of them.
No, Minnesota is not permanently cold, nor do we have permanent snow. We do not walk everywhere in snowshoes (I don’t even own any) and we do not use snowmobiles to get around (again with the not owning). Chains on your tires are no longer illegal everywhere, but no one uses them in the main cities, so tough it out and learn to drive. We are as modern as anywhere else, with the exceptions of some small towns in the middle of nowhere with only one cell tower and only modems instead of DSL.
In the Spring, all the snow needs to melt and the ground is too frozen to handle it all, thus we get floods. Floods are wet. Do not attempt to drive through the wet; that only leads to bad things. We have over 10,000 lakes and many rivers – go on, calculate just how much wet that is.
I won’t go into the whole boating thing other than to say we don’t all own boats but the majority of us do know that boating while consuming alcohol is in extremely bad, and extremely illegal, idea.
Summers are warm, and 100 + *F temps are not unheard of. Just because you are near water does not mean that you won’t get dehydrated. It means you have humidity to deal with too.
Tornado season is from May to September. Stay inside and away from the windows. Basements are good things. Cracking the windows of your house or car open a bit helps prevent a pressure build up that leads to broken glass. Do not go out wandering when the sirens go off and, should you be out when one hits, seek shelter immediately. They go through quickly, gaining speed across the plains. Their favorite targets are mobile homes and the deck that’s attached to your house. Yes, the eye is supposed to be calm, but remember that you would have to travel through the rest of it to get there. Yes, straightline winds can cause as much, if not more damage, and the same rules apply.
Fall is fricken gorgeous, but can have widely varying temps in a single day. I have gotten both heatstroke and hypothermia in the same day when the clouds broke and the rain came. Careful of your color scheme should you choose to go out and wander in this beauty – it’s hunting season.
And that would be a rough rundown of what to expect weather-wise in Minnesota. I have probably forgotten crap that other people consider important but, suffice it to say, use your common sense (should you have any) and you should be fine.
Edit: To amend the MN chains on tires statute - link to it in the comments as well.
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From the looks of it, that street was pure ice beneath the snow and it didn't look like a plow or sander got anywhere near it. Here the sanders and deicers would have gotten the bottom layer of ice before the the plow got the snow. If you know the road is ice, you wait the few hours for them to get to it. Seriously, it doesn't take too long for them to get the main roads. If it's a surprise, you either pull over and wait, or drive along extremely slowly with your anti-lock brakes and all-weather tires.
I could have sworn chains were outlawed because they were causing damage to the roads and had a tendency to either slip or fall off completely, causing a whole new set of problems. I just looked up the MN statute (https://www.revisor.leg.state.mn.us/statutes/?id=169.72&year=2008) and it looks like now we can again. No one in the cities or main suburbs do, but I could see possibly towns out in the middle of nowhere still using them. Will correct the OP.
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