Living in North Dakota, the Post About How Terrible Winter Is

So here's the thing about living in North Dakota: it's terrible.  For many reasons, but high on the list is the winters.  If you know me, you may say, "um, but Jay, it's not THAT different from Minneapolis, where you came from."  But you'd be wrong. It's way different.

First of all, when we get, say, 17 inches of snow in one storm, out here on the open plains, that shit blows everywhere.  Most of the time, it's not the snowfall that's even the main problem, it's the wind kicking it up into whiteout conditions and blasting it into  drifts 5 feet high.

Second, for an area that has snow sometimes literally 8 months out of the year, they're sure bad at dealing with it.  TWO DAYS after the last snowstorm, streets were still not fully plowed in the nearest major town.  When there is snow up to my car's bumper at major intersections 24 hours after snow has stopped falling, you have an infrastructure problem.  In Minneapolis, you better believe they know how to get the streets clear.  The second a snowflake gently drifts to earth, an army of plows are out.

But it's not just the city itself, you'd think every car with an ND plate was newly moved up here from Florida the way people forget how to drive in snowy, slippery conditions.  You have people either going comically slow or dangerously fast, good luck if you remember how to drive effectively, no one else will.

Third, it's just goddamn cold.  It was -21 a few days ago and it's only December. The real cold is still coming.  Combine that with a wind that never stops blowing ever and you get windchills at like -50 or worse at times.  There are days where the actual temperature is lower than -40.  At -40, you can throw a glass of water into the air and it will freeze before it hits the ground.  Water vapor in the air can sublime into ice crystals: you can get precipitation from a cloudless sky.  It's cold as shit here, and don't let anyone tell you they don't mind it, or that you get used to it.  If they tell you that, they're liars.

I might start a series of posts on why living here is the worst.  It's a good theme to revisit, because I don't know that I'll ever run out of ideas for it.