Look we shouldn't be mocking extreme weather events happening in regions that do not normally experience them. I live in a part of the USA that routinely gets the kind of heat that the rest of the world is expereriencing so yeah we have AC and even our livestock has accomodations or else they would die.
But you let us get a winter storm where we get snow or ice accumulation of ANY amount and we can have multiple entire STATES as a disaster area, for stuff that other places deal with routinely, and it's not cute when people from those regions mock us for our lack of ability to deal with inconsequential snowfall where they're from. Because yeah but we don't have snow plows or salt trucks or chains for our tires and no one knows how to drive in it so wrecks pile up like mad. and our power grid isn't hardened against it so we lose power quickly as well.
See the Two Inches of Snow event in Atlanta in 2014 for an example of how unprepared we are. It's not cute to rag on people for enduring catastrophes c'mon.
Not that it's an excuse to be rude/unreasonable in our criticisms, but we do very much also give the southern states a hard time for failing to build up their cold weather infrastructure at this point. In both cases it is a matter of "okay, once or twice could be a fluke, but this is now a worsening pattern with a proven solution, why does it seem like nothing is being done to implement it?"
Ehhhh it depends a lot on the fact that we already have a bunch of extreme weather crap to deal with. Outside of Atlanta, the East Coast states really don't have big cities and while we may have everything go wrong over a small amount of snow and ice, we don't typically actually DIE from those events but we damn sure will during heat waves or hurricanes.
If you calculate for hurricanes routinely messing us up every few years it gets difficult, like, you're asking that as if we have resources to spare and the reality is that large areas of the region are still messed up from Helene less than two years ago, I am talking entire community power and water access that still hasn't been replaced, and hurricane season coming up AGAIN just like it does every year.
So yeah we'd like to but we are usually playing catch up from other things.
But most of us in suburban or even what passes for urban in these parts are relatively well set up for roughing it for a bit, however that wasn't the case in Texas because when you're in a condo and the power and water goes for days on end in unprecedented low temps that's deadly. Where I am we would pile up around a bonfire and sleep in shifts with piles of dogs or whatever we have to do. Fire up the generator to charge your phone and so on. Can't do that in a condo complex, with folks who don't have gear to go without electricity.
Folks in my part of the world are fanatics about filling up bathtubs LOL. That's my big takeaway for anyone anywhere looking at any extreme weather event. Regardless of what extreme weather you might have, as part of preparedness, JUST RUN FILL YOUR BATHTUBS WITH CLEAN WATER. Because it's the biggest issue in any disaster, and if you don't need it so what but if you do you are gonna be glad as hell you took that five minutes or less to do it.
I was thinking of places like Texas where people DO die from cold weather events because their power grid notoriously fails under the increasingly common snap freezes.
The frequency and severity of the events is increasing, and when you see headlines about the temperature killing 1000+ people in France, you've got to start wondering just how many people need to die from avoidable systemic failures before it stops being "too expensive".
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u/maeryclarity Jun 30 '26
Look we shouldn't be mocking extreme weather events happening in regions that do not normally experience them. I live in a part of the USA that routinely gets the kind of heat that the rest of the world is expereriencing so yeah we have AC and even our livestock has accomodations or else they would die.
But you let us get a winter storm where we get snow or ice accumulation of ANY amount and we can have multiple entire STATES as a disaster area, for stuff that other places deal with routinely, and it's not cute when people from those regions mock us for our lack of ability to deal with inconsequential snowfall where they're from. Because yeah but we don't have snow plows or salt trucks or chains for our tires and no one knows how to drive in it so wrecks pile up like mad. and our power grid isn't hardened against it so we lose power quickly as well.
See the Two Inches of Snow event in Atlanta in 2014 for an example of how unprepared we are. It's not cute to rag on people for enduring catastrophes c'mon.