I live in New England now -- we moved when I was in high school, and I promptly put down roots but good -- but when I was a kid, we lived in Cincinnati. Not quite tornado alley, but tornadoes were enough of a thing that you got used to it. Tornado watch, sure, you put the news on in the background somewhere but otherwise you just carry on. Tornado warning, you... put the news on in the background and carry on! Unless the news is saying that the tornado is right in your town or something, then you go hang out in the basement for a while. There's a nice couch down there, you can watch tv.

Meanwhile, most winters consist of freezing rain and occasionally an inch or two of snow, and if snow happens by god the whole city shuts down. Panic! Disorder! No more milk or bread left in the stores, everybody stocking up on canned goods, because OH GOD APOCALYPSE WHAT IF WE'RE SNOWED IN FOR A MONTH OH GOD. My hometown was rich enough to have its own snowplows, so the schools wouldn't close until we had at least an inch and a half or so, and I thought this was monstrously unfair, because all the other schools were closing and it was CLEARLY a snowpocalypse in which no one could be expected to do anything but go sledding and drink hot cocoa!

My older sister lives in Montana. One time she came to visit during winter, when it was snowing and I either had a snow day or was desperately hoping for one. I remember very clearly how she looked around, and said in blank astonishment, "We wouldn't plow for this!"

I was dead certain she was joking. Of course you'd plow! You plow when three snowflakes fall within the same square mile!

And then we moved to rural New England. She was not, in fact, joking. That's what snow tires and, far more importantly, a population that knows how to drive in snow gets you.

However, last year or so, the shoe was on the other foot, because there were a couple of tornado watches and warnings in Boston. "Ah, okay," says I, "well, heh, our basement isn't finished, so I guess there's no call to go down there unless the tornado's actually on our block or something! Moving on with my day." And a friend of mine from Maine was in a panic, listening to the weather obsessively, flailing about tornadoes on twitter, etc, while I stared at her through my computer screen in stupefied surprise. It's a funny thing what you're used to.