I don’t know if living in Canada makes you know more about rust than anyone else. I live near Buffalo NY. We average 90+ inches of snow per year, much of it early in the year before Lake Erie freezes over. The lake moderates our temperatures so we spend much of the winter crossing the thaw and freeze point almost daily. We also have a bare roads policy and we spread more salt , mixed with even more corrosive chemicals per lane mile of road than anyplace else I have found.
Salt is much more corrosive at those temps than when it is colder. By -25F salt is pretty ineffective and mostly sand is spread.
The average coldest night of the tear here for the last 10 years is -5F.
I grew up north of Syracuse in a town that averages over 200" a year. Syracuse averages 120" a year. They get their lake effect snow from Ontario - which in the past 150 years of keeping records has only frozen over once…so the lake effect snow continues into April. The Tug-Hill Plateau (about 20 miles east of where I grew up) is the snowiest area in North America east of the Rockies. Towns there average over 300" a year. Towns in that region have had 120" of snow in one storm.
I know Mike, I frequently made Watertown turns from Buffalo or went to Montreal via Watertown, Canton and Malone. It is much colder and snowier there, from Central Square North.
However, they don’t have a bare roads policy and it is so cold that most of the winter what they are spreading is mostly sand. The first year I ran steady up there, people were getting in and out of their houses by their second floor windows and there was a 30+ mile stretch of route 11 near Chateaugay that they could only keep open with front end loaders endlessly filling dump trucks to be hauled away.
-25 F in Watertown was customary, -35 was not exceptional and I once saw -43 on a bank thermometer in Malone. In Chateaugay I was walking from the truck to a restayrant one night and I saw saucer sized snowflakes falling out of a cloudless starry sky. They were so heavy you could hear them hit. We didn’t care what the law said, we NEVER shut our trucks off in that country in those pre cell phone days.
I don’t think folks care much about their local climate conditions. It’s the friends and relatives and the values of the local community that attracts people to a place or not. The San Jose climate is great of course, but that’s not why I live here. It’s the high tech jobs that drew me here. I liked the Colorado climate just as much as San Jose. I prefer a snow storm to a rain storm any day. You can just brush the snow off your jacket and be good as new. Fog , I’m not big on fog.
Reminds me of the time I was chit-chatting w/a fellow co-worker in Colorado , complaining to him about the 3 weeks of dense fog we’d been having. His reply: “Fog? Have we been having fog?”
When my wife and I decided to leave NYC 34 years ago, our location criteria were simple. Top notch school system for our daughter, affordable housing in an upper middle class suburb, ample supply of professional jobs for both of us, world class health care, no more than 30 minutes to a major city, ample restaurants, and a temperate climate not prone to extreme events.
Most of my fmily moved to the Buffalo Area from the Southern Tier of NY for jobs. I don’t mind our climate, or Summers and Falls are glorious. I like the cold much better than heat. I cam put on boots, coat and hat and be comfortable outside all winter. They plow the walking path along the Niagara River and it is a beautiful place to walk. Since it never freezes it is just teeming with birds.
I have children, brandchildren and great grand children here.
I have been in 41 of the 50 states and have seen many places that are great to visit but none where I would want to live. If it wasn’t for offspring, friends and neighbors I would find Wisconsin or Rurak Michigan pleasant places to live.
Most of he places I have not been to are in the deep South not along the Atlantic.
The winter here is a time to socialize, I don’t have to tend the garden, fix anything outside or cut the grass, a two hour chore and if I have to snow blow it is a 10 to 20 minute job.
I hate those lug nuts with the metal covers on them… I remove and replace them wherever i do come into contact with them on my personal equipment. Just a bad idea all the way around for more reasons than just this particular trait. Cant stand those lug nuts, they should be banned I say…banned