[Quiet Man Cometh]

Coastal weather is usually more temperate than other areas around it because the water keeps the temperatures more uniform. It's he reason that we have a lot of homeless over here that actually come from Eastern Canada. The milder winters are less harsh to deal with. The weather in the interior is more extreme. We don't get a lot of snow, but we also don't get a heck of a lot of sunshine either.

Up where my dad is if you don't get at least a couple of feet of snow, something's off. I've had to dig poo holes for my dogs sometimes, and rescue my sister's Jack Russel from being stranded because the snow is above her head. She'd get fetched up on her belly and get stuck. My spaniel was a little snow plow, show she'd follow him most of the time, unless there was something interesting elsewhere.

I lived up there for seven years, in Fort St. John, and have personally seen it snow at least one day in every month of the year. Didn't seem to matter too much what the previous day's weather was. Could be 30C and still random snow the next day.

One drawback about the interior is that it's dry. When snow actually sticks around down here, it's so wet you can make some pretty cool stuff out of it, and good snowballs. Up in Fort St. John (which is mile 43 of the Alaska Highway if anyone wants to know) the snow is so dry that snowballs are almost impossible. It's so light and fluffy though, you can go charging through it without much issue, but it makes up for that by being such little flakes that when disturbed, the snow turns hard as rock. I don't recommend stomping on it. My dad showed me how to make an igloo one year, just by clearing a space, shoveling a heap of snow into it, waiting a bit for it to harden, and then hollowing it out. Make sure the outside is a few inches thick, put a candle in it for half an hour or so to melt the inside layer into ice, and you should be able to stand on it. Apparently it's a trick that cross country skiers use. Handy for survival too, since snow never gets lower than 0 degrees. Dig yourself a little hole and you'll be warmer than if you just stand out in the open.