One of the things I like to do when there is a bit of winter weather is to talk around a bit. This may seem like an odd sort of habit for someone who finds mobility as painful as I do, but I find it refreshing to walk around if there is some fresh snow on the ground and feel the cool of the air as I make my way around my neighborhood and see the condition of the streets and the behavior of the drivers on them. A good walk can help see the lay of the land, how it is that snow and ice are collecting on the roads, and it allows one to see the condition of the sidewalks, all of which are good to know when one is looking around at the area around one’s house.

It is considerably less enjoyable to drive around in snow for me than it is to walk, but sometimes I engage in that task as well in search of food. Much of the time, I tend to find that it is safe doing local driving in winter weather as long as one is sufficiently careful and cautious in the conditions that we have had over the past two days. This does not mean it is entirely stress-free or that one does not feel a bit of sliding every once in a while, but rather it is to say that if one is driving at low enough speeds with a gentle enough approach that one can safely manage to get a mile or to around town without disaster.

When one examines the way that winter weather operates, it is worthwhile to note that the same weather conditions do not apply everywhere. This is true, it should be noted, for other kinds of weather disasters as well. A tornado, for example, usually has a very narrow but sometimes extremely intense disaster profile. Hurricanes do a fair amount of their damage through storm surge in low-lying elevations and the wind damage in higher areas is similarly somewhat random in nature, and as is the case with winter weather, so long as the power system is sufficiently resilient a lot of people may avoid a great deal of suffering. If there is enough food to put in the fire and enough cozy blankets, a winter storm is a very beautiful thing to see from the confines of one’s own house, if it can make for a somewhat treacherous drive.

It can be relevant, though, to note that the conditions are not always the same everywhere within a given area even with a winter storm that covers the place. Local effects of topography and elevation and so on can dramatically affect how much snow or ice is deposited at any given place. Where I live, the roads are certainly snowy and a bit icy, but other areas seem to have escaped any sort of effects whatsoever, and still other areas are under considerably more snow than where I live. Those who have or wish to travel long distances or over mountain passes have considerably more difficulty than those seeking to travel through a small local area that they know pretty well. As is often the case, though, determining the difference between lunacy and adventure requires a sound knowledge of local conditions, rather than a blanket approach taken to everything.