Were Kyiv Winters as Snowy as I Remember as a Kid?

You are either colossally misinformed on the issue of Kyiv vs Kiev and the way geographic name spellings are formed, or use this deliberately as an outlet for colonialist sentiments. I hope it's not the latter.

"Kiev" is not an English word. It's a transliteration of Russia's spelling of the city name, back from the times when Ukraine was a part of an oppressive dictatorship that killed millions of Ukrainians (Soviet Union). Ukraine is now an independent country with Ukrainian as its official language (and has been for three decades, and it fought for this right for centuries). Kyiv is a direct transliteration of the city name from Ukrainian. It has now been adopted by governments & major media across the globe. If you don't like, deal with it.

"Eschew flamebait. Don't introduce flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say. Avoid unrelated controversies and generic tangents."

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html