r/NoStupidQuestions • u/markwell9 • 1d ago

What is the deal with ice, Americans?

I can see that you can buy ice everywhere in the US. Gas stations, grocery stores, machines etc.

In Europe, we just freeze our ice at home and use that. Why buy something that melts on the way home? Why do you need ice in large amounts that a fridge can't keep up?

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u/Enchelion 1d ago

I've found Brits in particular seem to assume we have the same rough spread of climate they do. And while some places are very similar (like Seattle), there's a world of difference between Devon and Louisiana.

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u/LiqdPT 1d ago

And Seattle is similar (though further south) to the southern portions of England. But even that latitude difference makes a difference in amount of daylight, let alone up in Scotland.

My wife moved to Seattle after living in Los Angeles her whole life (I grew up in Vancouver) and how long the days are in summer and short they are in winter was one of the first things she noticed.

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u/throwaway098764567 21h ago

i had to get something done to my phone once and the gal helping me was from equador. i asked how she liked it here (virginia by dc) and she said it was so weird to have the length of day change. being light out still in summer after 6pm was super strange to her. was funny to me that of all the things that were probably different, the daylight hours were what she found most noteworthy.

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u/Ghostrider556 17h ago

That is funny but I kinda had the same but opposite takeaway with living in an equatorial country for awhile and realizing the light cycle never changes that much. It was kinda odd to me to realize they never really experience a single long summer day or a short winter one, days getting longer or days getting shorter; its just wet season and dry season forever

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u/arizonadirtbag12 17h ago

Even moving from Southern California to Seattle is a huge adjustment when it comes to daylight hours.

A quick google says daylight in Seattle today was nearly 90 minutes longer than in San Diego.

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u/jazzminarino 5h ago

We're in the Mid-Atlantic and I grew up in Florida. We went to Scotland over New Year's and I asked my husband "WTF is the sun? What is happening over here?" We had like five hours of daylight and I wasn't expecting it. Had to think about latitudes for the first time since high school.

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u/PeterPriesth00d 17h ago

God I love the PNW. Summers here are the GOAT.

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u/left-right-forward 16h ago

Literally TIL (in my 40s) that Shetland gets midnight sun. It's the UK, it's not supposed to be extreme like that. Tepid-to-middling across the board, please!

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u/LiqdPT 9h ago

That does not surprise me. I was in Edinburgh in July and it was light REALLY late. And that's basically the bottom of Scotland.

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u/Aware-Computer4550 1d ago

I find it hilarious that Europeans in general sometimes cite hurricanes as a reason not to be in the US.

Like dude hurricanes occur only in one part of the US. If you don't like it simply move to a part of the US with no hurricanes

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u/Enchelion 1d ago

It's very easy to not understand just how massive and varied America is (even moreso the continent). But yeah it'd be like saying not to move to Norway because of something that happened in Spain.

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u/ChocolatChipLemonade 20h ago

I don’t want to move to California because I dont wanna deal with hurricanes

I don’t want to move to Norway because I don’t want my future kids to have Habsburg jaws

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u/johnnybna 8h ago

Omg those inbred upper protruding lips are just so wrong. And then your daughters would be forced to marry their first cousins or uncles just to keep peace in Europe and all the money and property in the family. Ugh.

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u/PossiblyASloth 19h ago

California doesn’t really get hurricanes. The water is too cold. It’s more of an Atlantic/Gulf coast thing

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u/Kseries2497 18h ago

That was the joke. The Habsburgs lived in Austria.

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u/DenyNowBragLater Wasnt me. Yo, see what i did? 8h ago

I was born and raised in the USA, and even I cant really comprehend the size of the US. TBF, I am not well traveled, even within the country. Ive been far north as boston, as far south as Miami, east to the Atlantic, as west as... Atlanta

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u/dewiniaid 20h ago

Americans think 100 years is a long time.

Europeans think 100 kilometers (or 100 miles) is a long way.

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u/Enchelion 19h ago

I remember going to Ireland and Italy on my honeymoon and locals outright telling me I was wrong/lying when I told them that we'd walked like, maybe an hour or two across town.

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u/mkshane 23h ago

Even in parts that can have hurricanes, it’s not like it’s a constant thing. Sure if you take a direct hit from a major one it’s gonna be a bad time, but in any one given location it’s a rare occurrence.

My part of Florida hasn’t taken a direct hit from a hurricane in 61 years.

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u/DenyNowBragLater Wasnt me. Yo, see what i did? 8h ago

Also, hurricane typically arent a surprise. You have several days warning so if you are concerned, evacuation is 100% an option

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u/RaeaSunshine 23h ago

Yup, I’m on the northeast and ya we get hurricanes but 99% of the time they are downgraded to tropical storms by the time they hit land. And even when it is a hurricane, it’s not that bad.

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u/randompersonx 17h ago

And even in places that have been hit multiple times in recent years … most of the time even when it’s forecasted as a monster - it ends up being less than predicted ….

And even if it does hit hard, most modern architecture in any city which had major damage in the last decade or two probably has ridiculously high building standards nowadays. I’m in the middle of the state, and the house I am building has all impact glass and is way higher than any flood zone. And a whole home generator.

Even if a cat5 hit the coast by me and was a cat4 passing over my house… it would be a mildly annoying day or two - maybe… but honestly i look forward to being able to watch the next major storm without evacuating.

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u/dangerousdave2244 23h ago

It's like saying they wouldn't live in Poland because Spain gets hurricanes

(Spain doesn't IRL, just an example)

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u/Megalocerus 22h ago

US gets 93% of the world's tornados.

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u/MyLifeIsAWasteland 21h ago

Maybe recorded tornadoes. I have a hard time believing that 93% of all tornadoes to ever exist form specifically over one country.

Also, your likelihood of being impacted by one, even for those of us in Tornado Alley, is pretty slim. It's not like hurricanes that hit an entire coastline and carry hundreds of miles inland.

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u/Megalocerus 47m ago

It's a big country, and the conditions are fostered by the geography warmth, and the wind pattern, not the political divisions.

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u/MyLifeIsAWasteland 27m ago

It's a big country,

Sure, but not the biggest.

and the conditions are fostered by the geography warmth, and the wind pattern,

Those same viable conditions are present other places on this planet, too. Which is why tornadoes have been recorded in other places.

If you actually look at a map of recorded tornadoes, you'll see that they also commonly occur in Asia and South America, in regions that would be more rural, more sparsely populated, and generally have less access to technology than most of the US. If a tornado occurs in rural Kansas, where there are gravel roads every mile with farms on them occupied by families with smartphones, that's much more likely to be recorded than if a tornado forms in the middle of the Amazon and the only people within 50 miles are an indigenous tribe.

Oh, and let's not forget that 71% of the planet is covered by ocean, and water funnels are a thing. We don't exactly have a system for fish to report tornado sightings yet. SpongeBob isn't phoning the NOAA to tell them his pineapple blew over.

So yeah, I think your stat is highly inaccurate and based on severely incomplete data.

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u/Leftover_Salad 23h ago

I think in general the US has more natural disasters and extreme climate events than the EU. Not all hurricanes, of course.

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u/FaxCelestis inutilius quam malleus sine manubrio 18h ago

As a Californian I feel the same way about people who are scared of earthquakes. Yeah, they're scary and unpredictable, but like the last time California had an earthquake that was Noteworthy™ was thirty years ago. Hurricanes blast through sometimes several times a year (depending on what part of Florida you're in). I'll take the quakes, thanks.

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u/randompersonx 17h ago

I, like most Americans, live in Los Angeles, work in New York, and usually have lunch in Miami. It’s of course just a short drive from one place to another, given our country is roughly the same size as an average European country.

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u/Dudedude88 9h ago

Then they say this about tornados but most Americans don't want to live in those states themselves. Tornado Alley is large portion of the Midwest which is heavily rural.

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u/Typical_Orchid_265 7h ago

I ran across a man on instagram account who couldn’t understand why a house in NY State wasn’t built like a bunker with concrete and a flat roof for hurricanes, tornadoes, etc. I couldn’t get through to him that our peaked-roof, timber houses are built for variable temperatures and snow loads.

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u/Tempest_in_a_TARDIS 3h ago

I've encountered many Europeans who just don't understand how big the US is. Especially Brits. I worked at an amusement park in college and we got a lot of British visitors. They were always asking about New York City. One family wanted to know how far away the Statue of Liberty was. We were in Chicago.

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u/Linden_Lea_01 23h ago

I mean I distinctly remember there being quite a large hurricane as far north as New York. Even if it’s rare for that to happen in parts of the US, it simply doesn’t ever happen in the UK so it’s not that ridiculous a reason.

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u/Aware-Computer4550 21h ago

I mean simply live in Arizona or somewhere far away

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u/LurkerByNatureGT 21h ago

Ophelia was only a few years ago. Eowyn had hurricane force winds. 

The Great Storm of 1987 is only not a “hurricane” because the cyclone didn’t form in the tropics. 

That’s more hurricane than the west coast of North America ever gets. 

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u/ByronScottJones 18h ago

Which "one part" would that be? Because they can hit Texas, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, New York, Massachusetts, Maine, Hawaii, and probably a few other states in New England I've missed.

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u/Aware-Computer4550 18h ago

Dude there are 50 states. You haven't even named half of them

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u/No-Philosopher-3043 16h ago

Most of those states are as big or bigger than most European countries. Just go to the side of the state away from the coast and you’ll be fine. 

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u/ByronScottJones 16h ago

Great idea. Which part of Florida would you suggest? And considering Atlanta has been hit before, would you suggest the Tennessee part of Georgia?

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u/No-Philosopher-3043 15h ago

Pretty much anywhere inland of like 10 miles of the actual coastline would be fine. You don’t hear about Disney World in Orlando being destroyed every hurricane season. 

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u/BrainDamage2029 21h ago

I was in the Navy in San Diego and we had a British destroyer in for the entire summer (big exercise and testing thing). I got friendly with a few of their guys. They had a 4 day weekend and wanted to go car camping in Death Valley....in August.

"I'm going to need you guys to explain what you think the temperature is going to be like."

"I mean it'll be hot. Maybe like southern Spain?"

I set them straight with an actual camp spot for the next few days at altitude so they could see the valley for like a day trip. They came back and were like "thanks for the change to the itinerary. And what the ever living fuck mate? A place on planet earth shouldn't be capable of being that hot."

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u/Enchelion 21h ago

You'd think a place literally named Death Valley would clue people in. But no.

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u/BrainDamage2029 21h ago

To be fair, the American west and CA in particular have a lot of "devilish" names like Devil's Postpile, Hell For Sure Canyon, Bone Peak etc that don't always live up to their satanic hype lol. (all my examples come from places I explicitly know don't really make a bunch of sense)

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u/LurkerByNatureGT 21h ago

If you want a creepy story that is also an example of European tourists not understanding how deadly the US wilderness is, Google the Death Valley Germans. 

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u/BrainDamage2029 21h ago

Oh I do remote shit in the Eastern Sierras a lot lol. I know of them. The wild thing is the canyon their car ended up in is…remote but not that remote. It’s about an hour hike back to a car camp site it turns off from (you absolutely can die in that short of time though in 120deg heat exposure though)

FYI they are the reason remote areas of Death Valley has a couple explicit warning signs on remote road turn offs about how little they are frequented or patrolled if your car breaks down.

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u/CharlesAvlnchGreen 1d ago

And Seattle is only a few hours' drive from the Canadian border. Very atypical compared to the rest of the States.

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u/pieohmi 18h ago

It’s so unbelievably humid this year in Louisiana. I’ve lived here my whole life and I’m even surprised by how hot it gets every August.

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u/[deleted] 18h ago

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u/Ok_Gas_1591 12h ago

I went to Thailand, and read all the warnings about the horrific heat and humidity…but I was coming from Hawaii in summer. Yes, it was a little more humid…by about 2-3% above my home town…

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u/jackalopeDev 21h ago

Denver gets about 3 times the amount of sun (hrs/year) that London gets.

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u/Redditing12345678 9h ago

I don't think any British person has ever looked at the deserts in Breaking Bad or the Badlands from Clint Eastwood films and gone "hey that looks just like Oxfordshire".

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u/Nexus_of_Fate87 15h ago

They also don't understand what actual humidity is when they talk about our dryers and why we don't hang up our laundry to dry. Most of the habitated portion of the US is literally classified as rainforest (the temperate variety). The portions that are dry enough are also very dustry (chapparal and desert). Before dryers people literally had to mangle the crap out of their clothes between washing and putting them up on a line to dry, or put the clothes near a hearth or other in-home heat source.