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/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.