Many countries aren't designed for heavy snowfall. You live in The Netherlands which gets a lot more snow than say the UK or America. Snow makes it dangerous to be outside. Slipping over, ice under the snow, cars losing control etc.
In Ontario they determine Snow days by driving conditions. For example once they couldn't get the trucks out fast enough for like 6 inches so no school. But when we have like 1 foot but the trucks have been already out no snow day. Last year it got so cold that the all the salt the snow trucks had did nothing. So we got some snow days from that even though there was no snow. Just some ice that could not be melted.
If your referring to America not getting as much snow as the Netherlands your very much wrong. Have you taken a look at Buffalo lately? 8ft of snow....
Also Netherlands coldest temperature recorded is -30(C), Canada's coldest temperature recorded is -70(C). Also in Alaska -60(C). In the Contiguous US it is -57(C).
Maybe it's because of the way you get to school. I think many people in the USA go to school per bus or car, while we all cycle to school. And when there's too much snow, you can walk, even though you'll most likely be late if you do that.
Much rather have snow than flooding. You can shove deep snow around and out of the way, deep water just ruins stuff.
But then you have the problem of the snow melting. In Buffalo they're worried that the snow will melt too quickly and cause flash flooding. School's in the UK don't typically shut. Everything else does, but most of the time schools stay open. Most people walk to school here. There was one time when we ran out of grit, meaning schools shut because roads were covered in snow. Now we have loads of grit so it doesn't happen again, and the gritter trucks are out pretty early clearing the roads.
When i was in school, they would not close the school, not stop buses, or even delay them to be late at school. there was several times where it was freezing rain and we still where on time to school, heck one week we had 3 feet of snow on the road, and the bus was only 10 mins late, and go to school on top, there also have been times where it snowed so much last year that half the doors where snowed in haha. Well i guess thats what you get for Canada, you are never late for school due to weather . The only day we where 20 mins late was when it was -39c outside, and the buses would not start lol.
haha, I remember last year they ran out of salt half way through the winter, I hope that does not happen again this year, its supposed to be the worst winter of all. Its even suppose to make last year seem like nothing.
Last year, it was so bad here that the ice storm that took out the city of Toronto had no power for 3 weeks, my mom was one that had no power, where i live we had 3 inches of ice on everything and wow was it ever heavy, a branch fell on my nternet line and ripped it out of the box. Even with that, we had school still haha.
Up here we have plenty of grit; when the schools shut three times within two months two years ago, it was because the snow was covering roads faster than they could grit them, and there was so much the grit wasn't doing anything. We closed after 3 hours of school time because they noticed the grit in the school was barely working, and a few hours later the council was like, 'We're going to start closing roads since its too dangerous to drive on them. Shut down your schools and workplaces so people can get home safely.'. There was aaalllooott of traffic.
20 Celsius is considered 'freezing cold' in some countries (lookin' at you, Australia) I live a two hour's walk away from my school and the majority (3/4) high schools in my area. I wouldn't even consider walking to school, since I'd have to walk through the seedier parts of my town (and most of my town is seedy, because, y'know, lack of government funding and all) to get there (there are other ways, but they take even longer) and its not uncommon to see stories of kids being mugged in these places getting to school. I walk and take the bus. I almost had to stay off school once because the bus way ended up closing due to snow, and someone had almost crashed into a tree because the road was too slippery that morning. As me and my mum decided to keep me off school, the school sent a text around telling everyone the school would be closed
