ARK wrote: ↑Fri Dec 16, 2022 5:35 pm
Watching the news this afternoon and they showed a picture of New Hampshire. It was snowing like crazy. Read your description of your winters. How do you function?
In the great state of Arkansas, it is currently a chilly 44F. Planning on grilling steaks, hamburgers and smoke sausages this evening.
You get used to it. The joke here is, "We got three seasons here- 'Winter', 'Mud Season', and 'Preparing For Winter'." A lot of us have plow trucks, especially if your house is a long way off the road, some folks have tractors with buckets to move snow around. Smart folks have at least one 4x4 with knobby mud/snow tires on it. Power grid goes down a lot especially in Winter, so a lot of us have generators as well, and at least one wood stove. I have a pellet stove and two wood stoves. Many, many people heat with wood here, oil and gas are too expensive when you're heating eight months of the year. Some people actually own two lots of land- the one their house sits on, and another of 40 or more acres called a 'wood lot' which is unimproved so taxes are low, even lower if you have a formal 'tree growth' plan, and is managed by selective cutting to provide fuel for your stoves. I bought a few tons of 'bio-bricks' for this Winter because I was still in rehab after Covid and didn't have the strength or energy to be cutting and splitting wood during the Summer.
You also learn to dress for the weather, you'll see a lot of people wearing LL Bean clothing, but it's not to be 'trendy', it's because it works. I start with a silk base layer, then a double-layer union-suit (one-piece thermal underwear with a hatch in the back so you don't have to take everything off to poop), a heavy-weight thermal Henley on top of that, followed by a turtle-neck and a wool shirt. Double-layer insulated jeans, maybe a sweater and/or a down vest, and a down parka for going outside. You can always take something off if you get too warm, but if you don't dress warm enough you're fucked- an out-of-state college kid went missing last year, was eventually found froze to death in a snowbank after a few too many drinks at the bar. Oh, yeah, boots- heavy (preferably waterproof) with thick felt liners and thick wool socks, ain't nobody making fashion-statements in Winter here, you don't want to let your feet get cold. At some point in Jan/Feb the temp will go down to about 25 below zero (sometimes a little lower, I think the record is about -50) and stay there for four to six weeks.
Smart folks keep a shovel in their vehicles, along with an emergency kit with food and a way to make fire. If you slide off the road it could be a long time before you get found. Every year some dumb people go missing and aren't found until Spring, some don't get found for years. I usually have at least two liquid-fueled lighters and wooden matches in a waterproof match-safe. It doesn't hurt to have a multi-tool like a Leatherman, a knife and a gun either. We have a few fair-sized cities but once you get outside of those it gets rural real fast. 98% of the state is forest and it can be many miles between towns. Hell, in the right (wrong) conditions it's possible to get lost in your own back yard- we had a fellow just this year, went out to check his game cameras and didn't make it back. He was lucky, someone noticed that he wasn't around and made a call- game wardens found him two days later, hypothermic, incapacitated and nearly dead...700 yards from his house. I keep a full EMT medical kit at the house, with everything from splints and bandages to scalpels sutures, needles and an oxygen bottle- if you get hurt around here you want to be able to do some things yourself, if you can, because if you need to dial 9-1-1 it could be anywhere from 1/2 hour to an hour and a half before anyone gets to you, no local cops, Sheriff's deputies don't come around much and the State cops announced last year that they would no longer patrol the area either. FD is 'volunteer', they have an ambulance but, frankly, it's quicker if you can stabilize yourself and get to the hospital on your own, you could easily bleed out before somebody gets the station unlocked. The FD is very good at saving foundations.
I grill and smoke year 'round, even below zero, cooking meat in a pan or oven is a rarity. Turkey goes in the oven because that's how the Mrs. likes it, but I'll smoke one every now and then. Sometimes do a beef stew or pot roast in the slow cooker but steaks, burgers, chops, chicken and sausages almost always go on the grill- meat kissed by fire and smoke tastes better. I have gas and charcoal/wood grills and a couple of charcoal/wood smokers, a Texas-style off-set and an upright 'bullet' type.