Reviews & Comments
Montpelier, ID
Winter too Cold and Dry -
12/12/2014I have only lived here two months. I just moved back to the intermountain west from living in Columbus, Ohio for eight years. I lived the first three decades of my life in Salt Lake City, so I had actually been looking forward to what I remembered as the mild winters of the west. Well, my memories had overlooked a few things. First of all, Montpelier is usually about twenty degrees colder than Salt Lake City and more prone to Arctic blasts (as is Columbus). For a dreadful week or so, curising around on weather.com, I couldn't find anywhere in the U.S. that was as cold as us, and that included Minneapoli; Fairbanks, Alaska; and even Kotzebue, Alaska up in the Arctic!! And while the powder snow does turn to slush rather than ice and it does seem a bit more ready to melt, there also seems to be a lot more black ice.
But what has really been getting me is the horrible dryness of it all. It seems like humidity helps quite a lot to alleviate the worst of the cold. In this arid climate, the cold just cuts right through you. And though I had never forgotten how horribly and chronically chapped my hands had always been in Salt Lake and how I had to put heavy hand lotion on throughout the day, I wasn't quite ready for bleeding hands again so soon. And now there is absolutely no cheating on skin care. If I miss anything at all my face looks like I must have been abusing it dreadfully for at least several months! And, although, it is relatively minor, the persistent static electricity is something I had been very grateful to do without in Ohio.
All that being said, it is quite wonderful to be around mountains again. And surely summer will be warmer than winter. There will be some great hiking to be had once spring comes.