Somewhere, we’ve all heard some romanticization of what winter is like in Canada. It’s so great, the snow makes Canadian landscapes look so beautiful, you can go snowshoeing and walk on frozen lakes, and the sun is always out, making everything that much greater. False! I mean, what I just wrote isn’t entirely false, but it really isn’t all sunshine and rainbows up here in the north, those seemingly wonderful things are not without their counterparts. This post is for my warm climate readers, the ones who have heard or seen pictures of the great things about Canadian winter, but likely haven’t heard it all. For those of you who live up north and have directed your southern friends to come up for a winter without mentioning all of the details, you know who you are, and you might just be cruel. And if you do live up here in this temporary ice box, you can read along and relate to the unspoken trials of everyday life.

To give some context, this is what stepping outside has looked like for the last week-ish. Constant snow squall warnings on our local news site, as well as on different weather channels. If you aren’t even sure what a snow squall is, take that as a warning to yourself before heading north for a fun winter getaway. Visibility at an all-time low, highways covered with a couple inches of loose powder that totally blocks your view when a car comes past in the opposite direction, and don’t even get me started on city driving. Snow banks lining the roads require you to pull halfway into potential oncoming traffic, just so you can see if it’s safe to turn – you might as well drive with a blindfold and rest those eyes. These squalls have also caused the Trans-Canada Highway to be closed in many sections for long periods of time, causing delays all around the country.

This picture might not give you the best scale, but can you see the little post sticking a few inches out of the snow in the middle of the picture? Yeah, that thing is over four feet tall regularly. One of our family friends keeps a measurement of snowfall for the year, and he said that so far, we’re up to 13 feet of snow (that has now been compressed or melted) from the end of November to now, the end of January. To give you an idea, 13 feet is about the height of a one-story house. Now, you’ll also notice all of the snow on the trucks, as this pic was taken in front of a Chevrolet dealership. That much snow on a vehicle is not a regular occurrence, but we do have to brush the snow off our vehicles usually at least once a day if we want to go anywhere. If it’s snowing, you can expect to brush that vehicle off every time it’s been parked longer than 15 minutes and you want to go out!

I think now is also the time to add in the temperature. You obviously need temps below freezing to keep snow around, and that’s no biggie. Negative 1 – 10 Celsius are fine temperatures, however, when we’ve been consistently seeing temps colder than your household freezer (-18 C), I take it as my sign to start looking at flights south. I could go on about the realities of the Great White North, but you get the gist of it. I think I’ve been coming off of a rant this week because of just how bad the weather has been – it’s really not that bad up here, and I might highlight that another time, but that’s not what this is about.

Part of what inspired this post was recent conversations with friends that I keep in touch with who live in Puerto Rico. The snow seems like so much fun, but I keep reminding them if they really want to experience the snow, a short trip will do – they may not love our seemingly eternal winter. These are friends who have never really experienced true winter. Their idea of winter is comparable to Canadian summer. To my PR friends, if you’re reading this, take it as a sign. I visited PR in January of 2023, and let me just say – the term “winter,” completely loses its meaning as a Canadian. Here’s a pic for proof:

Snow who? Never heard of her.

Don’t get me wrong, I love living where I do, and I’m eternally grateful that we are well-equipped for the cold months, and don’t experience natural disasters like hurricanes. Just thought I’d highlight the points that most people often don’t see. Maybe I’ll throw out some good ones next time, but this post was purely hating on the cold white stuff that overstays its welcome every single year. Thanks for reading, see you soon!