As mere inches of snow cripple the South, snow-adjusted northerners have been chuckling and shrugging their shoulders in bafflement. When it comes to snow in the United States, some just know how to deal with it better than others.
To demonstrate just how much cold weather culture varies across the U.S, Reddit user atrubetskoy mapped the amount of snow needed to accumulate over 24 hours for school to be cancelled. In the map, the lowest threshold for calling a snow day is represented by the lightest green, which stands for any snow or the mere prediction of snow. As you can see in the map, some areas require merely a chance of snow while others require a whopping 24 inches of accumulation! That’s America for you.
A few areas of the map may be misleading. First, in the Midwest and the Great Plains school closings are often determined more by wind chill and temperature than by snow accumulation. This is because cars tend not to start on the coldest days! Areas within California and other western states receive significantly varied snowfall depending on elevation, which makes it hard to find a reflective average number of snow days. Additionally, urban areas like Chicago and New York tend to have more resources to clear snow, and therefore tend to require more snow accumulation for closings than surrounding areas.
And if you’re wondering why atrubetskoy even bothered placing Hawaii on the map, it’s there for good reason. “Hawaii does get snow! Just… not where people live,” the user writes.
How much snow can your area handle?
via Flowing Data
