Also live in Norway, nord Trøndelag. Power went out 3 timeslast year, few times for days, but that was an unusual winter. This years it’s only gone out for a few hours.

Seems to be a maintenance issue, trees are not cleared well enough. I think.

Living in Finland, there's always news about tens of thousands of households being left without power for days after particularly heavy winter storms. It works as a reminder that yes, some people do still live in rural backwoods, their local electricity distribution depending on fragile wires suspended on wooden poles. Whereas living in a town of any size, blackouts caused by weather simply never happen.

This article is a bit painful to read. It should be lessons from living in the remote wildnerness in winter. Pretty much all those problems are relative to rural infrastructure and poor home building. If you live in an area with heavy snow load you want an A-frame roof to de-load the roof (for example see: Tahoe, CA ~ 500-800" snow a year).

Indiana here. Power outages due to fallen tree limbs, frozen trees "exploding", ice accumulation on lines, etc. is fairly common.

It can take days to bring a grid back up after a major outage. The lead time to replace a city-sized transformer is nearly 4 years, now (ask Puerto Rico about that).

https://www.powermag.com/the-transformer-crisis-an-industry-...

Article should be called Lessons you learn living in a place where it regularly snows but with terrible infrastructure and seemingly no societal preparedness for said regular snow

It is really interesting for me to hear your experience.

I have lived in Norway all of my >45 years on this earth and I can say that in the first half of my life were I lived on the west coast, power outages was totally expected.

We had a generator, and we had a gas stove ("everyone" in Norway use electricity for cooking) for those days, a kerose lamp and a wood stove.

The longest power outage I experienced was 3 days, somewhere around 1986 I think, but a few hours could happen multiple times and overnight outages were not unusual.

Might be all of that infrastructure paid by oil, on the other side of the border in a not that remote of an area (10people/km²). We have absolutely had power outages lasting several days.

I grew up in the middle of nowhere Midwest (where it snows plenty), and our electricity came from a rural co-op ("rural co-ops", because no one else is going to drag electrical wires out here, so we'll do it ourselves). We rarely lost power, the infrastructure where the TFA author lives just sucks.

Live in Nordland on a island. Lost power for about two and a half minutes on Christmas day. I dont even think anyone but me noticed since it was still early.

Even when I was living in the snowier parts of America we didnt lose power. I would say losing power is not a universal truth in the slightest.

This is largely true in places with above ground power lines, like the US. I happen to live in an area with buried lines and have never actually lost power due to snow.

Rural-ish Michigan here. It doesn't happen most years, and almost never in winter, but it can. It seems to happen a lot less than when I was a kid.

Regardless, "my power never goes out" isn't a great plan for what to do if your power goes out. Ask Texas, they once thought the same.

I lived in Australia in Far North Queensland until last year and power was running out every heavy rain. The point is that in that region there are only two seasons: a short dry season and a long wet one.

So everyone expects multiple power off a year and every household has generators and stock of fuel and matches for emergency.

Locals have a “it’s gonna be fine” attitude against a poor (but expensive) infrastructure. I was really disappointed, growing up in Europe, where a power off it’s extremely rare (even if we have rain and snow).

A lot of people in Norway lose power though, once in a while. Depends where you are. Just a few months ago thousands of people outside of Bergen were without power.

living in New England, I have also never heard of this and I don't think it's understandable at all. Trees are pruned around power lines for a reason.

As much as a bunch of people on HN want to attribute this to European superiority or tax rate or investment or whatever, it's not. It's just a willingness to maintain things and not let idiots with no real problems roadblock the process.

I live in a formerly industrial city in the US that gets serious snow every year and probably a multi foot storm every couple years. My power outages in the past decade consist of several seconds long blips and one 1hr outage at 8am on a national holiday when a transformer on my street went bang.

My extended family lives hundreds of miles away in the same state, in a lesser snow climate in a city within spitting distance of the same population and density. They have power outages out the wazoo because the utilities can't cut trees and can't update infrastructure without the towns acting as a roadblock at the behest of a bunch of Karens who don't wan't their decorative 100yo trees losing limb and don't want construction activity to maintain or improve anything (not just utilities, they're actually less burdened but burdened nonetheless) performed without intentionally prohibitive and expensive environmental study this and approval that and so of course less gets done proactively.

I'll leave assuming the demographic makeup of these cities and relative wealth levels up to the reader but I assure you it tracks stereotypes.

Snow isn't inherently the villain; mediocre infrastructure is

Yeah, that's not a thing here in saskatchewan either.

growing up in chicagoland when it snowed blizzard level often with lots of accumulation (70s, 80s), the power never went off, to your point also.

I've lived in Michigan for about the same length of time, and even with the terrible service our current power companies are providing the only time I've lost power for more than a few minutes during the winter has been after an ice storm.

Norway is probably one of the better managed countries on earth

We usually hear about the US and Canada losing power mostly due to freezing rain across a continent sized area as most of the power cables are on poles.

How does that compare to Norway?

Those of us with above ground power lines especially not in cities experience power outages. Particularly when it's near freezing and there's significant ice accumulation.

https://satwcomic.com/you-re-hot-then-you-re-cold

Whatever weather people are used to will be handled seamlessly. If it's unusual, it will cause failures. Doesn't really matter what kind of weather it is.

This is basically the Netflix Chaos Monkey theory of systems, applied to weather response.

(A friend of mine lives in Shanghai. She's shocked whenever I mention a power failure; in her mind, a functioning country wouldn't have them at all.)

In large parts of the nordic countries we have either killed off all the trees or dug down the cables, making power interruptions uncommon except when someone with an excavator cuts a line by mistake or bad maintenance leads to a fire or short.

In the population wise very small county here I live in Sweden we haven't come that far yet, so when the storms a while ago did their thing some people were without power for several days. Mine was out for some six hours or so. The forests around here look like "plukkepinn" and tore down many, many above ground power lines.

When I grew up in the late eighties, early nineties further south we had interruptions at every other thunderstorm and most regular storms. This is one reason why we had a wood stove and self-circulation for heating rather than a heat pump. Around the turn of the millenium they buried the power lines and since then my family there see almost no interruptions.

Even a backward country like the USA, our power has never gone out in the winter. Only in the summer due to lightning strikes.

This is an interesting way to frame it, but then the obvious question is, for areas where it almost never gets above freezing, why doesn't the snow get infinitely thick?

The other main ways you lose snow are: sublimation, wind blowing it elsewhere, compaction, and getting dirty (darker color helps it melt in the sun). All of these are relevant for other cities in the snow.

Living in a place that often drops down to insane temps, I am also obsessed with watching the YouTubes from there.

The outdoor market in that 24 hours video really got me. These women are just out here, selling very, very frozen fish, for hours at a time. Like... they didn't want to move that market inside?

A big thing I would add is to strongly consider how much you'll be moving, especially when it comes to footwear.

Boots that are rated to -40 during light activity can leave you with cold toes if you're standing still in -10 for an hour.

Activity levels also dictate how you layer and how easily you need to dump heat. If you're hiking, snowshoeing, XC skiing, you want some layers with zips so you can quickly let heat out.

A buff works pretty well instead of a balaclava and can serve the same purpose and more. Essentially just a tube of stretchy fabric that you can wear around your neck and pull up into a close enough approximation of a balaclava.

This guy has mastered the art of dressing for winter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XG3WfCWU9D0

Get boots a size too big to wear multiple layers of wool socks.

> battery-heated versions

all the ones I've seen when researching were lithium-ion from sketchy-looking brands, any brands you recommend?

Any recommendations about the boots? Or what to check for?

I have to 2nd this.

It's significantly easier. I used to do this in the CA drought where I would fill a bucket when waiting for the shower / sink to get hot, and then use the bucket to fill the toilet after I flushed it.

I find it quite funny. I read it as if he is obnoxious towards himself, because the lessons presented are learned the hard way.

I'm in the foothills in Northern California, and I've never met anyone here that changes their ties out for winter. When there's chain controls, they'll let you through if you have winter rated tires, including all-season, and all-wheel drive, otherwise you need chains.

Everyone I know who drives a lot in the snow gets a vehicle with all-wheel drive and everyone else carries chains. (really they're cables, on a small vehicle)

The difference between what winter-only tires can handle vs winter-rated all-season tires is so minimal that they're not with getting. Chance ate conditions are either fine for the all-season tie or there so bad that the difference is inconsequential and you need all-wheel drive or chains.

I've only heard of people changing their tires on the Midwest, where snowfalls are in the inches, not feet.

Around this parts of Europe, they are mandatory.

The writing tone is obviously self-deprecating.

Eh, all seasons do you just fine. Not worth the effort to put winter tires on, imo.

I've lived all my life in Finland, even though all through my early adulthood I was planning to move to some place much warmer. But later (especially now with children for whom the snow is so exciting) I've come to like the four seasons and the balance it gives.

That article was a strange read from my perspective, because here the infrastructure is built for winters as well. I don't remember school ever being canceled due to winter conditions, traffic is only a mess after a snowstorm.

Just before the Superbowl, the Boston Globe had an article full of interviews with New Englanders who have moved to California. One claimed to still be a New Englander but didn't miss the weather, "I haven't slipped on ice in 30 years". I had to think, are they really New Englanders if they can't handle the weather? I think that's a big part of it. Having some Patriots and Dunkin Donuts swag doesn't cut it IMO.

Cold and dry is not a problem. You can always add more layers of clothing and get very comfortable.

Warm and humid is a real problem. You can't just remove clothing until you're comfortable. And the humidity.. there's no remedy to fix that.

+1 I grew up in CA, went to college in IL and couldn't move back fast enough!

I hate bugs, I specifically like late autumn/winter/early spring cold times because there are almost no bugs. I don't mind snow/ice as much.

Rural areas are much more common in the US than in other countries and much more likely to lose power in a storm, due to the long lengths of power line needed and the lack of redundancy from being too sparse to have multiple feed-ins to the local substation.

It's not the cold that knocks out power, it's the wet and saturated ground and high winds knocking trees into the power lines.

I live on the metric side of the Atlantic. Winter means extra tension on wires, extra load on trees leading to higher risk of air lines broken. At the same time you have decreased number of man-hours in a day, decreased efficiency in those hours and difficulty reaching points of failure physically. This leads to high stress on maintenance in an event of a snowstorm. Depending how inclined your country is to vote for the MBA-style policies, there are chances your maintenance crews are already at near-capacity and therefore such an "adversary" event can easily lead to some a bit more remote areas left without electricity for a week at -20°C. Having A+++ house with photovoltaic cells will not help in that case.

I grew up in Canadian snowbelt (Great Lakes) and never lost power. If there is an ice storm - then we all freak out. I'm not saying it can't happen if a lot of snow falls and then there is wind but we lose power in summer more often from squirrels trying to nest in transformers. The biggest blackout I experienced was in Toronto in a summer heatwave.

Trees fall down due to combination of heavy snow and wind. They probably don't cut sufficiently around power lines. It is extra bad if the ground hasn't frozen properly yet.

In some places it may be cheaper to dig down the cable than facing storms.

I don't have enough data to generalize across the US, but I grew up in a cold, snowy state (Wisconsin) and we almost never lost power. It happened, but it was pretty rare. We did have a generator for such instances, but that was because we had a dairy farm and the cooling unit for the milk tank needed to be kept running even if utility power was down.

If you can't drive anywhere, chances are the people who fix electricity grids will struggle too. And snow storms can fuck with infrastructure..

Less of an issue in areas where people do get around no matter the snowfall tho.

Snow and ice builds up on overhead powerlines. It can cause issues. States with tornados or hurricanes are more likely to build underground which avoids this. My location in SE Michigan is all overhead and, while we rarely lose power, I see tons of issues every ice storm that some unlucky few suffer through.

I live very near a hospital and suspect I branch off their higher-SLA lines so that may be a factor.

Warmer places that don't experience cold much absolutely suffer during a cold spell. Texas (with its independent grid) has been absolutely wrecked every time it gets too cold.

It's not really meant to be advice. It's the author's own experience, ironically written as if it were advice.

For example:

"You did bleach ten gallons of well water for long-term storage already earlier in the year, right? Good."

This is sarcasm, because the author did not do that.

I just learned first hand what to do with frozen pipes. Couldn't stop it this year as it went so far below zero. On the last day before it warmed up one of the pipes split and put about 2ft of water into the basement. Amazing to see the damage to the CPVC pipe that broke -- like it literally exploded, which it probably did.

This is a common reaction to posts on the internet, including blogs and Hacker News comments.

I actually enjoyed the writing. It's clearly reflection on the experience presented as an "advice list" somewhat jokingly. Since author didn't enjoy the experience, tone is somber. After spending childhood in the cold place I can relate.

Aliens. It is always the aliens. And they love to wear Martens.

This advice was also given to me if I ever get caught in the rain while camping and soak my shoes. Bring some newspaper for both a firestarter and for leaving in your shoes overnight, and wake up to dry shoes!

Old-school winter hacks tend to be simple physics, not magic

Ice on power lines. It's the freezing rain mix in just the right conditions that builds up ice on anything and takes down lines.

All the damned power lines in Chicago seem to be above ground on poles in the alleys. They were always breaking. It was infuriating coming from a place with buried lines.

It can also be structural. Depending on the elevation, my county mandates houses be designed to survive wind speeds up to 157 miles per hour and snow loads up to 545 pounds per square foot. That means a flat roof would have to be built like a parking garage floor, but a sloped roof can transfer that weight to the exterior walls, and an true A-frame directly transfers the load to the ground.

Manuals used to have tens of pages of useful information, if not more. These days it's just tens, if not a hundred pages of (mostly meaningless) warnings, in different languages, and sometimes only that. If you're lucky there's a single page of mostly pictures and a few lines of text, and typically just the obvious parts. I went through some old storage boxes yesterday. Found "manuals" for a number of items. One had four manuals. Turned out it was just that they could only stuff half a dozen languages of warnings in one manual, so they made a bunch of them, all just the same warnings, in different languages. More paper for the recycling centre.

Instruction manuals often only contain legally required information, making them particularly useless.

You've happened upon the difference between compliant and capable. See also, any military technology, which costs 10 times the normal price to meet strict compliance requirements, often while completely disregarding capability.

My favorite response to the issue is the AcessiByeBye plug-in (https://www.accessibyebye.org/) which blocks accessibility compliance overlays that make web pages difficult to use with keyboard navigation and accessibility tools like screen readers, but are needed to meet accessibility regulations.

I suspect it is because snow storms are fairly rare or at least random and quite a few people do not a) realise they have not done much of any physical exercise for ages b) think shoveling snow is easy, try to do it fast and take too big loads into shovel (which you can with snow, but not with sand). For older people this might mean overexertion and possible seizure, if their cardiovascular health is not well either.

Solution: don’t be a hero. Take breaks. Take smaller shovelfuls. If the first ten shovelfuls are hard, how hard is the 1000th going to be? I live in Finland, are fairly fit and quite strong, but shoveling the car out of thick snow for half an hour is pretty hard work for me. For an older person, it must be double as hard.

Cold weather itself increases the chance of heart attacks. Heat waves get all of the news coverage, but cold weather is the real killer: https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Ex...

+1, I learnt too late how useful a brush is, also for clearing small puffy snowfalls much faster than shovelling

I hated the reference to burning man. Most burning man people I have dealt with don't plan long term (aside from the event) and the long term planning they do have - isn't usually at their home.

For context, I was born/raised SF Bay Area. Moved to Plumas County (north of Truckee) in 2017 for about 8 years. Didn't mind the snow - have a tacoma trd off road. The electric coop was amazeballs even when PGE tried to screw with them. I've since moved. I like rural - but the wild fires and trumptopia kinda soured me.

I live on an island now with a driveway that has 15-20 degree slope. It snows rarely, but garage is insulated and I need to get a heater near the water pipes. It snowed the one day I had to get to the ferry at 650am for jury duty. I'm glad I had the TRD - it wasn't much but waking up to - doo-dee-doo - drive to ferry and unexpected 2" of snow...causes some anxeity.

This is a concern of mine, and my attics (3 of them due to the way the house is built) are pretty inconvenient to check, so I put some battery-powered temp/humidity sensors in them.

Haven't gotten around to setting up any alerting thresholds though... I'm not actually entirely sure what temp/humidity thresholds would actually be useful.

I'm in California. We have good cold-weather gear, you just have to get it from the right kind of store, specifically one that supplies outdoor workers.

Yes, but it's nowhere near as effective as you might think. Also, due to its ineffectiveness, it ends up costing a LOT of fuel.

those handheld propane torches, oft used for weedburning on asphault/concrete, are very good for clearing "post snow clean up ice patches, IE tire treads that iced over, foot prints.

Not useful for snow as you'll quickly be swimming and out of propane

Also, sunlight improves your health: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sYnUPxG7ONk

> starts to feel like cope

In a way you’re right. All the effort to reduce energy usage, go green, the savings are all negated with energy spent on generating heat and emissions.