lessons of a cold winter virgin

As I compose these words, the amount of snow outside is steadily shrinking. Highs have recently been tipping into the 40's, probably the first this area has seen of that since before Christmas, and the snow cover that has lingered since December is finally starting to dissipate. We can't get too comfortable, though, because current forecasts call for snow tomorrow morning and possibly again during the weekend.

When we moved out here to Northern Utah, my wife and I heard from numerous locals that last winter was very mild and the local reservoirs and streams were hurting because of the lack of snowmelt. This winter has been much colder, and there has been much more snow than last year. But it has been a dizzying transition for this native Houstonian who had previously only lived in one area where heavy snow was common (Toronto) and that was for but a brief summer stint of a few months.

This is the record of last month's weather in Brigham City. In particular, note the temperatures around January 13th and 14th...

I'm pretty sure the coldest outdoor temperature I'd ever felt before now was around 15º, give or take a few. Here, we went fifteen days without hitting a temperature that warm (not to mention two days where the high was 15º). That's crazy to me.

There's all sorts of other adjustments too, which never would have occurred me. Sure, I expected that I'd need to acquire new driving skills, learn to dress in layers, and so on. But here's a list of some things I have learned, also know as ANDY'S GUIDE FOR WARM-WEATHER TRANSPLANTS EXPERIENCING UTAH WINTERS FOR THE FIRST TIME!

- Icicles get impossibly large. I regularly see ones that are my height and taller. And then they break off and shatter like glass, and it's beautiful and scary at the same time.

- When snow sticks around for months after it falls, it becomes this weird, black, dirt-mud-permafrost mixture on the side of every road. I've seen this is minute amounts in Texas, but nothing this pronounced before.

- Regular windshield wiper fluid can and will freeze on your windshield. (Don't worry, I now have the sub-zero-friendly stuff.)

- Keeping your car clean is a daily dance. Do I go to the carwash if my car's just going to get covered in salt throughout the day of driving again? Is it so cold that if I wash it, the water will freeze all over my car as I leave the carwash? Is the build-up underneath my car going to start messing with my tires? So on and so forth...

- Copious amounts of ice can freeze over your heating system and shut it down. (Good news: I did not learn this lesson at home. Bad news: I did learn this lesson at my church's sanctuary... on a Sunday morning.)

- When shoveling your driveway, wait until the snow plows go by to do the bottom end of the driveway where it meets the road. They will throw about 3-4' of snow onto that portion of the driveway and it's no use shoveling that out twice in a row.

- UDOT is your friend. (Plus they have a really useful mobile site! Thanks, Department of Transportation!)

- Not everything about winter is terrible, though. The air here is incredibly dry, especially compared to the humidity of Houston, but even compared to Los Angeles, San Francisco, et cetera. 30º here feels about like 50º in Texas or coastal California. (So, -20º only feels like a humid 0º! It's still miserable.)


 I'm sure there's many more where this came from, but this is off the top of my head. All of these things are second-nature to native Utahns and others who've lived in cold-weather climates, but it's been like learning to speak a foreign language for me. Hopefully I'll be much winter-wiser next year. In the meantime, I'm hoping that groundhog was right as I count down the days until spring...