How bad are the winters really? (Antelope: work, house, construction)

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by rickers

Here in Hot Springs it rained all last night and it was about 40 deg. F. Now it's freezing the rain on the streets and starting to snow. Great, snow over ice, just what we needed !

Especially if you want to scare them southron ferriners half to death

[rickers]

Here it is a couple of hours later and it's still 40 but the sun popped out. It's really nice outside, kinda makes me want to go fishing.

[laidback24/7]

Originally Posted by Reziac

Especially if you want to scare them southron ferriners half to death

Sometimes I get the feeling that a few people are trying to do just that.

I guess I can understand wanting to keep your population thinned out as much as possible. I don't like crowds much myself. I don't even like going to Wal-mart unless it's late at night.

I am from TX and it feels like there is less and less room to breath around here, but the fact is that the world's population is getting out of control, not just MT and TX. People are living longer and then you've got people having ten kids per family.......what do you expect?

I just want a nice place where I can raise my kids and keep to myself. I promise not to camp-out on your lawn!!

[NYMTman]

Bozeman has several inches of fresh snowfall from this morning/early afternoon. Still snowing lightly, and the winter storm warning remains in effect.

[rickers]

One fun thing, (fun at least for kids) to do when it's super cold like that is to put some very hot water in a coffee mug and take it outside and toss it into the air real hard. If it's cold enough outside the hot water instantly turns to snow right in front of your eyes.
Kids love this and adults who have been partying find it amusing also ! It has to way below zero for this to work.

[AndersonRM]

Originally Posted by rickers

Nobody lives up on Rogers pass but however people do live in Butte.
In 1916 Butte recorded a low temp of -52 deg F. That is freaking A cold !

You are correct. However in the winter 1974-75 I was living in Sydney MT and for 2 weeks the temp was -30F and the wind was blowing about 25-30 MPH and the windchill was -92F. That's the coldest I was ever in.

[meadowlark3]

I grew up in rural NE Montana, spent 28 years in southern California and now live in western Minnesota. I really believe that a person's "experience of the weather" has a great deal to with their personal outlook. A person who has their emotions/perceptions calibrated to freak out at 10 below will have problems starting at around zero!

Read one of those short pieces in the Reader's Digest years ago: Old guy in New Hampshire is rocking on his store's front porch when an out of stater stops and asks, "I'm thinking about moving here. Where I come from, everyone is really friendly and helpful. What are the people here like?" Old-timer says, "Well, pretty much friendly and helpful." #2 out of stater stops with the same question, "I'm thinking about moving here. Where I come from, people are very unfriendly and unneighborly. What are they like here?" Old timer answers, "Well, pretty unfriendly and for the most part unneighborly." Bystander says to the old guy, "That doesn't make any sense. You told two people completely opposite things about this area." Oldtimer responds, "Of course, it makes sense. However they see their hometown now is pretty much the way they're going to see New Hampshire once they've been here awhile."

The point being, if your wife is fearful in her perceptions and already "dislikes Montana winters" I suspect any Montana winter will have something in it that justifies the perception. It's all risky to "talk somebody" into something!

My suggestion would be to get her on the internet and find out factual things about for her to look at and then she can decide if she's willing to experience and deal with those things (just like every Montanan in the state's history has!)

Montana winters are no worse than California earthquakes or Minnesota thunderstorms! And yet everybody living "in them" finds ways to get through or they leave. I doubt there's any way to remove her final doubts. Whether or not she gets through them (and how) is pretty much a personal decision, I think.

I had never lived in Minnesota until we came here in 1993 and I was scared to death I would never survive the summer humidity (that was the "negative" that hooked my thoughts). Turns out, the severe humidity is NOT a constant in much of Minnesota, and~~besides that~~Minnesotans bought into the Air Conditioning Concept sometime in the last 30 years, so our 110 year old house is air-conditioned! So there ya go! Even a camping trip with mosquitoes can be enjoyable if I make up my mind about the thing!

Meadowlark

[MontanaGyrl]

"The wind is relentless in Montana due to open plains."

Not all of Montana is open plains. Many towns are in somewhat sheltered valleys, and the western third of the state is quite mountainous (hence the name "Montana"!). Helena, although I have never lived there, can be windy occasionally. The town of Livingston is infamous for its wind.

Anyway, I don't think the winters here are bad. You adjust. When there's a big snowfall predicted back East, such as in the D.C. area, people panic and buy out the stores, or so my friend who lives there tells me frequently. Here, if a big snowfall is predicted, life pretty much goes on as usual because people are already prepared.

Finally, to the OP, I would say neverneverNEVER think about moving to a place that you have not visited in person. Web sites, personal anecdotes, etc. are NO substitute for seeing the real thing.

[Reziac]

Originally Posted by meadowlark3

Montana winters are no worse than California earthquakes or Minnesota thunderstorms!

The four California seasons: Fire, Flood, Riot, and Earthquake.

.

[Joe Doer]

One winter (about 1970-1972) we had a two week period in Glasgow where the high temperature never got above -20. That is not even taking in the wind chill which made it at least 10-15 degrees colder. On the plus side, there is little snow when it is that cold.

One learns to dress properly and to stay home if at all possible.