What is your personal definition of a harsh winter? (recorded, 2015, day)

[AtkinsonDan]

Originally Posted by HJ99

Harsh is where the infrastructure and services arent in place to deal with it.

^^^ Very true. Harsh is also where population density makes it challenging to cleanup the snow. I live in New Hampshire but before that I lived in a couple of urban spots in Massachusetts where there was very little space to move the fallen snow and arguments could easily arise between neighbors over snow cleanup activities. Winter in New Hampshire is a cakewalk compared to those areas.

From a strictly weather standpoint I would define a harsh winter as one where there are multiple small snowstorms each week for a period of 2 months or more. It is the type of pattern where you go from snowstorm to cleanup right into the next snowstorm and so on and so forth. February of 2021 had almost three weeks of such weather. If it was to go on for 2 months or more, that is what I would consider a harsh winter.

[deneb78]

Any place where snow is a regular occurrence

[The Grandeur]

Originally Posted by deneb78

Any place where snow is a regular occurrence

You exxegerate things.

After all, you don't live in Africa.

[B87]

Originally Posted by InternetPerson

Yet SF summers are considerably warmer than the UK or much of northern Europe.

SF summers are notably cooler than summers in SE England.

[TenderFrost]

Here in North Dakota, we just have had 3 weeks of below -40F wind-chills.

One week was below -50F and it's quite painful to walk your dog at -54 F, especially picking up the poop, because you need to remove gloves for that.


When it warmed up to -20F, it actually felt like a summer.

Surprisingly, while I could text without gloves just fine at -40, but at -50, even 40 seconds of texting trigger frostbite...


So, for me, a harsh winter is below -50F, as I gotta walk my dog 5 times a day regardless of temperature and can't just stay indoors. If she needs to go, it doesn't matter if it's blizzard or -60F. If You gotta go, you gotta go...

[MeesterJ]

Harsh would be like the past several winters, that brought nothing wintry here. Just endless wind plus rain or even wind plus sun (which I hate even more with these dull temperatures), and daytime temperatures between 6 and 12 degrees Celcius.
Now, a favourable winter would be no daytime temperatures above 5 Celsius, most of winter below zero Celsius temperatures and lots of snowy days.

[chhotes]

Harsh winter is killer. Life is hard

[forgotten username]

We definitely don't have a harsh winter here, yet it can be pretty miserable when there's one month straight of high pressure, constantly humid, damp foggy cold with temps hovering between 2c and 7c without much sun, and no rain or snow at all.



I'd often rather go through an alpine-type winter because it just feels more like a true winter that you can make the most out of, and you're not stuck in the same pattern for weeks on end.

[Isleofpalms85]

Originally Posted by TenderFrost

Here in North Dakota, we just have had 3 weeks of below -40F wind-chills.

One week was below -50F and it's quite painful to walk your dog at -54 F, especially picking up the poop, because you need to remove gloves for that.


When it warmed up to -20F, it actually felt like a summer.

Surprisingly, while I could text without gloves just fine at -40, but at -50, even 40 seconds of texting trigger frostbite...


So, for me, a harsh winter is below -50F, as I gotta walk my dog 5 times a day regardless of temperature and can't just stay indoors. If she needs to go, it doesn't matter if it's blizzard or -60F. If You gotta go, you gotta go...

I’m surprised your cell phone even works at such temperatures

[segfault1361]

If one of the following is met:

* 8 or more days in a 30 day period where wind chill has reached below -20C
* 2 or more ice storms (major freezing rain event) in a 40 day period

I don't use snow as a criterion, I can deal with 25cm snow events easily as long as there is no ice.