Jackson Heights Blog

What It’s Like to Live in a City with a Real Winter

Find out how these homeowners have learned to live with — and love — their wintry cities

By Shannon Petrie, FrontDoor.com | Published: 11/05/2009

Living in a city with a real winter presents obstacles as well as opportunities for fun.

For some, chilly weather and a heavy snowfall are a welcome treat once — maybe twice — a year. School is cancelled, down jackets and scarves are excavated from the backs of closets, snowmen are built, and hot chocolate is sipped by the warmth of a fire. The snow melts, and life goes on.For others, below-zero temperatures and several feet of snow on the ground are the norm for many months of the year. Members of the former group might ask the latter: How do you survive?

“I think the answer is simple: It’s what we know as normal,” says Steven R. Buck, city manager of Caribou, Maine, the most northeastern city in the United States. During the winter of 2007-2008, the city received a whopping 198 inches of snow.

Not only have residents of cold-climate cities learned to adapt to their wintry weather, some have even come to embrace it.

“We refer to our winter as one of our biggest celebrities,” says David Holder, president of the Syracuse, N.Y. Convention & Visitors Bureau. “Come February, we’re going to be on the Weather Channel at least once.”

In International Falls, Minn., often listed as the coldest city in the contiguous United States, Mayor Shawn Mason says residents fondly refer to their city as the “Icebox of the Nation” — a title they had to fight for when Fraser, Colo. challenged the trademark in 2007. The Minnesota city officially won the title in 2008.

Thanks to Fargo, the 1996 film by Joel and Ethan Coen, some people think Fargo, N.D. experiences winter 12 months a year, says Cole Carley, President/CEO of the Fargo-Moorhead Convention & Visitors Bureau (even though none of the scenes in the movie were actually filmed in the North Dakota city). Despite promoting a not-entirely-accurate perception of Fargo, Carley says the movie brought a lot of welcomed publicity to the city. “I wish they had made a sequel,” he says. “We had a lot of fun with that. We used to give copies of the movie away to meeting planners.”

Along with the fun side, living in a place with a harsh winter comes with its fair share of challenges. If you’ve ever wondered what it’s like to live in a place where shoveling snow, weatherproofing your home and playing winter sports are all in a day’s work, read on for stories from these four residents of cities with real winters.Find out how these homeowners have learned to live with — and love — their wintry cities.