Realism - more than Patriotism

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".. we get 'wet snow', and very little"

Wet snow is what I call "heavy" or "packing snow" ... it is most treacherous and slippery. The dry powder that falls at minus 15 is light as air and lovely to drive in. With snow tires its lovely stuff and ground clearance becomes the deciding issue as you can't risk plowing snow.
Does the prevailing wind/weather in your region blow in from the west?
 
There was a guy on TV from the met. office explained the problem. He said the UK is unusual in that it frequently snows at around 0C which means it has frequently been raining before or the snow turns to water immediately washing away any salt. This combined with sudden drops in temperature from plus to minus at sunset means it is difficult to prevent a sudden freeze.
 
Understood ... snow fall and snow characteristics that we here in "Island Southern Ontario" depend on what state of freeze up the Great Lakes are at ... when still open water prevailing western winds rip across and pick up vast amounts of moisture. A slight shift north or south will result in Buffalo NY getting hammered or, as last week, Erie Penn. receiving 36 inches of snow, or Toronto getting hit or spared.
At the cabin the snow comes from Georgian Bay to the west .. with Halliburton Highlands to the immediate north the closest towns at a higher elevation get 24 inches while I receive 8.
 
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Yes, in my area the prevailing winds are from the west, and the west coast is around 40 miles as the crow flies, with the flat, Cheshire plain between the coast and my town. Generally speaking, in winter, what New York gets, we get the tail end of around a week later, but it's now about four years since we had a decent snowfall, which was around 4 to 6 inches within an hour or two, and maybe 12 inches on the hills, and had gone within a couple of days.
 
Being an island on the edge of a continent the weather is usually created here. The gulf stream brings warm moist air across the Atlantic which meets cold air in winter from the Arctic or East Europe. It is where these fronts meet combined with the height of the ground that decides the weather. Height doesn't have to be high though, a few hundred meters is high enough to get a lot of snow while near the coast they get none. A few years ago some people were trapped in a bar for 9 days when a sudden snow fall trapped them in a bar on the moors. Until the snow stops and the wind stops the snow will continue to drift and cover where a plough has been, plus the moors are so flat you cannot tell where the road is.
UK snow: 7 trapped in Lion Inn pub in Yorkshire for last NINE days | Daily Mail Online
 
Trapped in a pub - oh dear, how sad !!

A couple of moorland roads in the north east used to have tall poles lining the edges, to mark the road when the snow was deep, so that rescue or snow plough vehicles could find the road.
The pics below show the notorious 'Cat and Fiddle' road, just a couple of miles from where I live, with the building in the center, on the ridge, being the Cat and Fiddle Inn, from where the road takes its name, and reputedly the highest inn in England. The telephoto shot shows the pub itself. As with the roads mentioned above, this road used to be lined with 'snow poles' too, but they apparently vanished some years back. At each end of this road, which runs between Macclesfield and Buxton, across the moors, there are sign posts detailing the number of fatalities in the current year, and the snow conditions in winter, with additional warnings when the road is closed due to snow.


 
January 13 ... day trip
... from +12 degrees with day long heavy rain to -17 with high wind ... all in about 12 hours.

17 inches of snow shrank to 8 inches of styrofoam.

The river is solid ... the beaver pond overflowed the trail and froze ... as always when there is a thaw and rain the moose are out browsing on low hanging wet vegetation. Moose tracks. The trail was superb to walk .... solid and ski-do broken.
The finches are back and feeding on Niger Seed ... good news, they will nest and the woods will be musical come spring
 
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January 26 ... Friday day-trip
Drive in to Willy's, easy walk, temp O, 3 on the south side, large pine branches down casualties of high wind and freezing rain, moose tracks capture browse on apple and lilac, the ice has lifted but the fox still uses the inshore ice alongside the riverbank, the conditions remind me of the 1992-93 winter ... deep cold cycles very little snow, like Styrofoam, and no fresh snow till March K-car wagon days ... all the rain has really pushed up the big beaver pond and it has over-spilled into the small pond which in turn has created a thick skating rink for most of Willy's front yard.
 
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