How does North Carolina handle snow better than St. Louis?

I grew up in a residential neighborhood a 25-minute drive north of Duke University or Downtown Durham, a few miles off the nearest major road. I can't remember a single time when I couldn't leave home on foot for a week—not when it snowed 12 inches, not when an ice storm coated every tree and power line in a layer of ice, not when the high didn't go above 32 for 3 weeks and the city reservoirs froze a foot deep. Here, my street and most of the surrounding sidewalks are still solid ice; I've had a hard time being able to walk to the bus stop, much less the mile to the Metro station, since last Monday. All three of the buses I should have been able to take home today went out of service when they arrived at CWE. No trash pickup on my street either.