Winter in North Carolina is actually pretty ok

I have only ever really lived in North Carolina and therefore, don't really know a lot about the world's climate. I do know that certain friends of mine that I went to college with moved on to other parts of the world and I have to say, their winters look absolutely brutal whereas here in NC, it is comparatively mild.

Sure, it still gets coat-cold, but the sort of thing where everyone is freezing to death or in danger of it, well, that just doesn't happen here and I can venture a guess, but I don't know for sure why that is.

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The above photo is about all we can expect as far as snow accumulation is concerned. Honestly, it really doesn't snow that much here at all. Where I live is just a bit above sea level, and the sound that connects New Bern to the ocean is obviously right at sea level. This likely contributes quite a lot to our very reasonable winters, and perhaps our proximity to the sea is part of that as well.

I do recall a freak storm that happened while I was in college at nearby Greenville, a city that is also right around sea-level, and that storm dumped a couple of feet of snow on the city in the course of a day or so. The city does not have the equipment necessary to deal with something like this on the roads, so basically everything shut down. The college, which is the life's blood of Greenville's economy, was closed for about a week because I guess they could be held liable if people tried to go to class and got hurt or killed.

I remember the streets were not being cleared because the city simply doesn't have very many vehicles for that and it is understandable why they wouldn't have it. It wouldn't get used. I did find it kind of amusing that despite the fact that the schools were closed, the bar area of the city was absolutely booming. Apparently the trucks needed to transport beer and other booze are not at all affected by the same road conditions that prevent cars from safely getting around. That was a week of probably epic sales for the bars, all of which were open from dawn to late at night. Although I have managed to spend most of my life not being an alcoholic, I certainly felt like one that week.

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Something like the above would likely be considered just a normal day somewhere up north, but here in North Carolina, it would shut the city down almost entirely. Not the bars of course, but everything else.

There is a city in Virginia that is not that far from here, just around 4 hours by car. It is called Harrisonburg and it, much like Greenville, NC, probably wouldn't exist if it wasn't for the college James Madison University that is located there. Well a friend of mine moved there after college and last winter I went to go and visit him. It was just alarming to me how unbelievably cold it was there. There has to be something unique about the topography of the place because when we looked it up, it was actually much colder in Harrisonburg than it was in most of New York or Pennsylvania, which are both further north than Virginia is. I suppose this is why Harrisonburg has a ski resort nearby.

Perhaps I talk too much about how great I think North Carolina is but this is one of the main reasons why I love it. We don't really have any extremes any time of year. We have mild winters and summers and spring and autumn are just glorious. As someone who actually does like winter, I wouldn't want to live somewhere that it is never cold.

So if you like all 4 seasons but don't want any of them to kick your ass, North Carolina might be a decent place to consider moving to.