By the way, this snow isn't anything when compared with what we usually have (we haven't had it this winter, though), but I'd be hesitant to laugh at southerners who "can't handle it."
It's new to them; of course they don't know how to handle it.
It has almost nothing to do with knowing how to handle it. Every time it snowed when I lived near the North Coast, there were countless cars spinning out, sliding into the ditch, and into each other. A snowstorm in the north, when it's unexpected or worse than expected, causes traffic chaos until the salt and snowplows clear things up. I remember one seven-mile commute that took me eight hours.
Amber Hoyt, who doesn't yet have a driver's license, could operate a car in a northern snowstorm as long as the plows and salt trucks had been at work.
Here in red state hell a huge number, probably nearly half, of all commuters are transplanted Yankees. When an inch or two of snow gets pounded down into black ice, they can't drive on it, nor can the natives. It's astounding how slick it is. Stationary cars sometimes start sliding sideways off the crown of the road.
After years of observation, my conclusion is that people here drive exactly the same way as people in the north. Both regions have the same proportion of good and bad drivers. The only difference is how much snow removal equipment is available.
