Large Cities with Most Harsh Winters (snow, average, temp, day)

[Beliy Plashik]

Originally Posted by Spade

I'd rather deal with Chicago winters than Minneapolis/St. Paul Winters.

Which one gets more snow fall?? Chicago or Minneapolis/St. Paul???

[tahiti]

Originally Posted by Spade

I'd rather deal with Chicago winters than Minneapolis/St. Paul Winters.

Agree with this. I've spent full winters in both, and Chicago's weather was practically balmy compared to Mpls. In fact, I don't find Chitown's winters to be all that bad actually.

[414Milwaukee]

It goes
1. Minneapolis
2. Milwaukee
3. Chicago

For coldest winters

[bchris02]

Why has nobody listed Anchorage, Alaska? It takes the crown over the twin cities. Fairbanks is far worse, but I'm not sure its large enough to count for this question.

[Chinolala]

Buffalo, NY

[ajf131]

Originally Posted by tande1n5

San Diego.

San Diego

[ajf131]

Originally Posted by vegaspilgrim

Denver can have a lot of harsh winter days-- like today, snowing all day, high of 20 degrees. The time span of winter is very long-- snow usually falls as early as October, late as the end of April. While a freak occurance, it has even snowed in July before! However, Denver gets a TON of sun in between the snowstorms, which melts the snow fast, even if it the thermometer is still low. That sun makes a huge difference! Because of that, Denver is no where near the list of the harshest winters. I would vote Minneapolis, Cleveland, Buffalo, and Pittsburgh as the worst. BTW, Denver is not surrounded by mountains-- it has mountains on one side (west) and is totally wide open plains to the east.

Pittsburgh? You're kidding right? Pittsburgh does have real winters, but it is NO comparison to Minneapolis, Cleveland, or Buffalo. Pittsburgh's winters can be cold and snowy but are for the most part pretty tolerable to my knowledge.

[returnedYinzer]

Pittsburgh, gets no where near the snowfall of Buffalo, Cleveland, or even Chicago. We are far enough from the lakes. They get 30 inches of lake effect, we get 3. Denver was harsher of a winter then here with snow and cold.

The nice thing about Denver was, you saw more mild days, and more sunshine during winter. Where in Pittsburgh, be ready for never ending clouds and grey skys till may.

[dullnboring]

I lump Pittsburgh in with cities with harsh winters as well. Not AS harsh as places like Buffalo and Cleveland, but harsh nonetheless. I suppose it's subjective though. I'm having a tough time at the moment dealing with NYC's comparatively mild winter so I'm sure I'm biased, but the cities who I associate with really harsh winters have mostly already been named: Buffalo, Cleveland, Detroit, Chicago, Milwaukee, Madison, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, Syracuse, Rochester, Burlington, Boston, etc.

I also think the Pacific Northwest, notably Seattle and Portland have very harsh winters, but not in the snowy sense. I mean "harsh" as in "difficult to deal with" due to the persistent grey skies, rainy weather, and shortened daylight hours. It can get really gloomy. Those sentiments are doubled for Anchorage.

[astroline95]

if you're going by snowfall: erie, syracuse, buffalo, cleveland
if you're going by temperatures: minneapolis, st. paul, fargo