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Comment by linehedonist | Hacker News Reader

sure, though New York has gotten a real honest-to-goodness winter this year. There's been a foot on the snow on the ground continuously for the last month, and it's been cold enough that the pipes in one of my bathrooms froze. I think it's easier from the West Coast to bemoan the end of East Coast winters than to live through one :)

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This has been a decent, classic winter. It’s an important part of the regional character. We need to have snow occasionally, remembering to shovel the sidewalks is an essential “on the ground” indication that everybody is still doing society.

Sorry about the pipes.

> remembering to shovel the sidewalks is an essential “on the ground” indication that everybody is still doing society.

Are they still doing it?

I had a few "proper winters" in the UK during my early 20s. The roads are gritted (and ploughed if necessary) by local councils in lorries, but the footpaths are supposed to be done by residents. The first proper winter, after the snow had refrozen a few times overnight, the paths were lethal. We have these yellow grit bins scattered everywhere that residents are supposed to use to get grit to do the paths. But nobody was doing it. Anywhere. As a pedestrian you just had to walk in the road. This was a real "society has failed" moment for me.

Not that it matters any more, though. Such winters seem a distant memory. The last I can remember was 2018's "beast from the east", but that was more of a freak event than a normal winter.

> the footpaths are supposed to be done by residents.

For public footpaths, unlike in places like Germany [0], there are no such enforceable rules in the UK.

[0] https://www.ergo.com/en/newsroom/advisory/2025/20251222-verb...

I think that's a purely German thing. I doubt it's the law in the US and Canada either. Shouldn't have to be.

In the US it is often law, but like everything here it varies state-by-state.

Just based on what I’ve seen waking around: yes, New England still does a pretty good job of snow removal overall. I’m actually not sure how it’s handled in major cities (maybe the city hires people), but I’ve lived in small cites and college towns where the locals are responsible for this, and the paths are usually clear.

We all have in Europe and the US - but it too is a sign of harsh climate change, because the reason it is cold "down here" on our latitudes is that the arctic is super hot, pushing the cold down to us.

Perhaps some added details would be nice?

In Nuuk they have had 11 degrees celsius. January has been, on average, 8 degrees above the norm. They are having the highest temperatures since 1784.

It is warmer in Greenland than in Denmark.

They now have to close down ski-slopes in Greenland.

It has been brutal, and very cold, and we have not seen the sun. Send help!

The problem is that one cold winter doesn't mean we fixed the problem. We need to look at the average change throughout the years, and that's very worrying.

No disagreement there!

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