I think it's sad that there are no *real* winters anymore. No skating on frozen lakes, no skiing, no building snow castles for the kids.
How do you build a snow castle?
By rolling big snow balls and using them as building blocks. Didn't you do this as a child?
No, I didn't. I grew up in Alabama, which hardly ever had snow. If we got even an inch of snow, all the schools were cancelled and people stayed home from work. If there was even a prediction that there might be snow, all the stores were raided for milk and bread and batteries and Coleman fuel, in case the power went out.
We'd never have made it past second grade, like that.
We drive in the snow here in Colorado and nothing is cancelled unless there is quite a lot of snow, but people are more prepared for it here because we get quite a lot of it. There are snow plows here and they put a mixture of salt and sand on the intersections of the busier streets so cars can safely stop.
Because Alabama hardly gets any snow at all, nobody is really prepared to deal with it. There are long needled pine trees in Alabama whose branches will overhang power lines and break if their needles become coated with snow and ice, so power lines in Alabama often break if there is ice or snow. All the pines in Colorado have much shorter needles and can take ice and snow without breaking.
