Some Minnesota questions

[Min-Chi-Cbus]

Originally Posted by HappyandPeppyPepper

Thanks for all the replies.
I think I would like Minnesota just because of what you said. I am into a healthy life style and can't stand smoking.

Could I ask, if anyone is knowledgable, is Minnesota's weather similar to Northern NH or VT's?

I lived near Dartmouth College years ago and survived that weather okay. Would it be worse than that in winter? (I have visions of Little House on the Praire and Pa being lost in a blizzard!)

According to Paul Douglas (local/regional/national weather expert), the chances of a "good ole' fashioned winter" (one with bitter cold and 60+ inches of snow) went from "depends on the year" to maybe once every 4 or 5 years. The rest of the time, it hovers around the freezing mark for highs much of the time but is cold enough most hours of the day for ice/snow to form and enjoy outdoor recreation. There is still always the occassional week or two when temps struggle to get above 5 or even 0 degrees -- THAT will be a big difference, but it's very short!

Now....that is according to the NEW weather phenomenon we've been experiencing.....NOT necessarily the past, or even recent past (when we lived in MN just 1.5 years ago during winter it was pretty damn cold, depending on the year!). Global Climate Change is slowly making MN a very tolerable place to live all of the sudden!

[uptown_urbanist]

Originally Posted by cgy1

Having moved from the SF bay area, I would have to say that I was shocked at the amount of smoking I see here compared to the bay area.

Really? I see a lot more smoking in the Bay Area than I ever did in Minneapolis. I suspect that much of this depends on where you live or work (both in the Bay Area and in the Twin Cities; I see far less smoking in our current East Bay neighborhood than I did in our previous SF neighborhood.). I think both locations are overall pretty anti-smoking, though, and work hard to make smoking both inconvenient and expensive.

Smoking is, however, more immediately visible downtown (Mpls); while I like not having smoke inside, I wish that buildings could offer their employees ventilated smoking rooms. Taking a walk on the sidewalks downtown exposes you to a lot of second-hand smoke as the building smokers are forced to huddle outside along the edges of the building, alongside the sidewalk. It seems like a well-intended law gone astray, or at least certainly makes it less pleasant to walk around at street level (and is, I assume, equally unpleasant for the smokers who are out there in the middle of January.)

On to the weather question: if you can survive winter in NH, you will be fine in MN. And also FWIW, have never lived in New England, but when we lived near Philadelphia the blizzards there used to have a far greater impact on daily life than does the snow in MN. Not that there can't be big snowstorms -- there can be, and two winters ago we were running out of room to put the snow from by the garage and sidewalks -- but in MN (the Twin Cities, anyway) it usually doesn't come all at once in huge dumps, and even when it does, they generally clear the roads very fast. My impression is that it's a bigger deal in other, flatter parts of the state, as blowing snow sometimes shuts down highways.