Well, when I lived there, I didn't know one person who owned a 4WD... no such thing.. they just weren't around then. You made sure you had weight in the trunk if you had a car, or sand in the back of a pickup, and that was that. And, people didn't get all wigged out about blizzards or bad weather. When it got WAY cold, in the days of unheated garages and barely-heated houses, my dad drained the oil out of the car and it sat in a bucket in the kerosene stove in the kitchen... then he poured it back into the frozen car at 5:00 a.m. to make it to work... many years of which was outdoors, the poor SOB.
Fast forward to Boise..... where 95% of the transplants from other places drive humongous SUVs, 100% of which are 4WD, but no one uses studded tires, so when it snows the usual amount of ONE INCH here, the roads are instantly slick with ice and there are 300-400 accidents per DAY. Black ice is very common as well, so even on dry days (precip-wise), the roads can be coated with invisible ice, and ditto.... people are flying all over, with bad wrecks, and fatalities are common. A "storm" (that is the phrase they use on the TV channels here for ANY cloudy day)
that snows one inch will make headlines for 2-3 days.
So, I have to admit, it is just amusing as hell to watch nor'easters dump on the east coast and bury the area in tons of snow, and then listen to people here get totally freaked out if it snows 3 inches.
OOH EEK, I see snowflakes!! Time to call in the Mounties!!
