

When I lived in the NE US in the ‘00s it would snow so much the airports would shut down for a day. Piles of snow would last well into spring. Last time I was there it snowed maybe a total of a foot for the entire winter for a couple years running. All those winter scenes in film, or even Currier and Ives prints from the turn of the last century are the only context that it used to actually snow and stay covered for months at a time.
Solar panels use photons to create electricity, not converting infrared heat to energy. So the heating really isn’t a factor in the energy created. Sure, we could place a crapload of thermopile/TEG’s on a solar panel to soak up the heat and turn it into electricity, but they’re expensive and inefficient.