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I would say brutal summers are much worse - but that's just my opinion and preference.
I just naturally can tolerate cold pretty well, and absolutely can NOT handle heat. That's why Chicago works really well for me. It's not overly humid in the summer, and it only gets up into the 90's a handful of times a year. Otherwise the upper 70's to the mid 80's works perfect for my body in summer.
I wouldn't really call Chicago winters BRUAL though - that's more 400-600 hundred miles north and west of here. We certainly get a good taste of that though with a few cold spells down around 0 during the winter - but it normally hovers from the mid 20's to the low 30's - which is very easy to handle if you throw on a decent coat and a hat. It doesn't tend to set in until the first half of December, and it breaks pretty fast in the beginning of March - at least to temps in the 40's through 60 degrees, which is very easy to handle.
I remember two years ago though it was between 0 and 20 degrees for something like 3 weeks straight. That was really hard to handle. Two years before that though it was in the 40's and even 50's for much of February. It helps a lot that it's a constant roller coaster, so rarely do you get stuck in a bad pattern.
Do you know for a fact that most traffic accidents in heavy snow result in harmless spin outs and ditches? What about ice and sleet? When you consider the number of automobiles on the road and the incidence of death due to automobile accidents versus death due to heat stroke, I would really have to question your sources of information.
Probably doesn't know for a fact, but probably from experience. Being a native Minnesotan, I can agree that the majority of traffic accidents in the winter result in spin outs and ditches. I used to drive 25 miles through the metro to work, and days after a storm or significant snowfall I'd see a vehicle in the ditch every half mile or so, un harmed, just stuck from spinning out. The majority of the time that vehicle was an SUV. Cars actually are easy to drive in the winter because of front wheel drive. Trucks are fine, but the SUVs have problems because not all use or have 4wd.
The last significant storm the media reported "over 300 auto accidents this weekend"...well, i can assure you that at LEAST 250 of them were spin outs or ditches by stupid drivers.
Brutal summers are by far worse for me than brutal winters. Chicago had very brutal winters-- some years-- but I just couldn't take the summers of the deep south. Los Angeles is nowhere near as mild as people would like to believe (once you leave the coast) and it's absolutely killing me.
I can take cold. Put on another sweater. Stay indoors. Granted, I'm an indoors person; the only way you would catch me in the Great Outdoors is dead. I used public transit and never really dealt with winter.
Heavy summers are inescapable.
My last comment is this: You stay clean in winter. There are literally days in July and August where I'm sweating by the time I get to my car after having showered minutes before. Ugh, it's so disgusting. Everyone is sweaty, everything looks so rundown and impoverished, the sunlight is absolutely nightmarish... It just beats you down and down until you feel tired and angry. Everyone is tired and angry, traffic is a nightmare and then you have to fear the power outages... it's quite literally hell.
What is easier to tolerate? I'm not elderly yet, but when we move, I hope we stay forever. What do you think is hardest on the elderly?
Well, on the elderly, I would say the cold would be harsher ( one of the main reasons that the elderly usually move south to states like FL or AZ ), but in overall, I would say the heat would be worse. With the cold, you can always warm up--dress in layers, stay inside, have items delivered to you, etc, but with the brutal heat, you can only dress down so much, and its easier to suffer heat exhaustion than it is to develop hypothermia inside your own home.
In other words, San Antonio summers or Minneapolis winters?, which is worse?
I've visited both cities for lengths of time, and IMO, I'd say San Antonio summers are FAR, FAR worse than Minneapolis winters.
The thick humidity in San Antonio gets to you in just a few hours, and you never get to escape it. There are a lot of locations in Minneapolis where you can do things which are warm inside.
I have lived through the worst winter michigan has ever seen in 1976 and have lived in las vegas in some extreme extreme heat and without a doubt I would pick the cold over the heat anyday.
I would chose a hot summer over a cold winter any day. I moved to Reno in which I found extremely cold. I left within a month because of it.
I just thought Reno had a lot of snow--not really extreme cold. I guess it's all relative to where you grew up. I consider extreme cold when it gets below zero and the wind chill is colder than about -20F.
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