The thing I realized at some point specifically about driving is that in the upper midwest and other snowy states, we have this enormous and very expensive infrastructure dedicated to keeping our roads usable through the winter. https://twitter.com/_chelleshock/status/1360739273935355907

Snowplows are only the most visible aspect of this. There are also trucks that spray ice-melter before the storm and while it's happening, there's equipment to melt snow to water and spray it off to the side they use to keep snowbanks from building up on highways,

there are literal snow dumps out in thinly-populated areas where you can haul the snow if you've run out of places to put it, there are small plows used on sidewalks in downtown areas, the list goes on and on.

Extend this to every other area of life and yeah, no shit, the midwest is better set up to deal with serious winter weather than San Antonio is.

A huge part of our road-clearing infrastructure really is designed to tackle this problem: https://twitter.com/laffertylib/status/1361020627554041866

You can drive on snow (if you're careful). You really can't drive on ice. (Or walk on ice or do anything else unless you're equipped with, like, spikes, or ice skates.)

People have added a lot of interesting examples in the comments, including literal road design (if your main problem is "severe flooding" instead of "snow/ice" you build differently).

Also electrical infrastructure (the midwest buries a lot more of its lines -- honestly, that seems like it would be a really good idea in the south, too? Houston does not normally get blizzards but it does get hurricanes!)

And of course houses are built really differently when your goal is "stay cool in the summer" vs. "keep warm in the winter." Which reminds me of this really funny (?) story about my time in Houston. (I lived in Houston, Texas for several years when I was a preschooler.)

I rode in a carpool to and from my nursery school, and one day we had just dropped someone off and the mom somehow got confused about the fact that she was in reverse, not drive, and she hit the gas, shot across the person's lawn, and DROVE INTO THEIR LIVING ROOM.

She blasted straight through the wall like the Kool-Aid man.

At some point years later I asked my mother if this had really happened because I found it hard to believe it had? Especially since at best I was buckled in with a lap belt (it was 1976) and I barely remembered the impact, just the destruction.

My mother said yes, I was remembering this correctly, and that the houses in this neighborhood were just incredibly flimsy due in part to super weak Texas regulations on stuff but also just various practicalities of building in Houston.