As it is cold enough every day to force everyone to wear extra layers of clothes, winter is about to enter our life. In an unpleasant way. I, for one, don’t welcome its presence. The darkness makes it hard to get up in the morning. I feel a tad more listless in the morning and the change in weather can easily get any of us sick or at least a sore throat over night.
Every winter, I can’t help but notice a couple of differences in a way Americans deal with the snow and cold, compared to how I saw Europeans do so.
Winter Tires
As far as I am concerned, winter tires are not usually required legally in America, or at least some states such as Nebraska. On the contrary, cars in Europe are required to have winter grippier tires to make driving safer. Given that schools in the US are cancelled when there are only a few inches of snow already (that’s perfectly normal in Finland), it’s surprising that we don’t have regulations mandating the use of winter tires.
Double-layer Glass
I have seen any building in Nebraska that has more than one layer of glass, unlike what I saw in Finland where apartment windows are equipped with two layers of glass. One of my friends in our building had to buy some tapes to stop the cold air from going through the one-layer glass window since it cost too much to keep it warm. Collectively, if we had more cold-resistant windows, how much energy/electricity would be saved?
Minh Quang Duong 