Wintertime in my hometown

The winter has arrived in the UAE, and it has also arrived in my hometown in the USA.  They got about 60 cm of snow in one week.  Can you believe it?  The temperature is about zero degrees!  It usually gets very cold in my hometown, even colder than zero degrees.  They usually get a lot of snow, but it's a bit unusual to get so much all during one week.  Last winter they didn't get very much snow.  I talked to my dad yesterday and he told me that all of my nieces and nephews built a big snow fort out in the yard.  You can see it on the right side of the picture above.

Would you like to live someplace with so much snow?  It looks like a lot of fun, but really it is a lot of hard work.  First of all, you have to clear the snow away from your house so your family and your visitors can enter easily.  Some people use a machine called a "snow blower" to do this (see the picture above and below), but other people just use a snow shovel.  This uses a lot of muscle!  Also, it is more difficult to move around from place to place.  Cars have a lot of problems in the wintertime and the roads are not very safe.  Moreover, it is very expensive to heat your house in the winter to make it a comfortable temperature inside.  In the picture to the right you can see my brother. He is standing below an icicle which is hanging off of our house.

But still, I agree that it is beautiful!