They are pervasive here where I live, and we usually only have at most a couple -0F days a year.
Guess what, though? About once a decade, a huge number of basements get wrecked because of the the infrequent freak rainstorms. It’s hard to gauge based on topo maps who is vulnerable as well. Growing up, we had what was termed a “1000 year storm”, which we avoided serious damage by just having a crawlspace. Our cars may literally have floated off; there was dead fish on our lawn when we came back from vacation, and the nearest lake is close to a mile away… Our neighbors’ damages were in the thousands, and ours were about $2 for a new water heater part because my dad couldn’t be bothered to figure out how to clean it out.
My condo building has a basement, but I made sure to buy quite uphill from the lovely local river. I like the idea of basements. But I’ve seen so many wrecked. And they can be very tough to get back to 100% after a flood.
