Naawww, ...

Jim just panicks when in the confined space of a snow shelter. He was at a winter camping course I direct every year during one of our traditional blizzards, and decided in the middle of the night that he wasn't going to be able to get out of his shelter in the morning at the rate the snow was piling up. So he bailed and got into his tent. Now, ya gotta unnerstand - Jim had spent more time building a snow fortress around his tent than he did on his snow shelter (supposedly snow wind walls, but it would have worked for a major winter storm at the 17,000 foot camp on Denali). And he does have a Bibler Eldo, which is made to stand up to major Himalayan storms. So when Jim suggests a tent, he doesn't mean a Eureka summer tent. He is talking about a full-on expedition tent.

Ok, Jim has a point here. And yes, he does have experience (he and I have done a couple winter trips together). It is easier and faster to put up a good tent than for most people to dig a snow shelter. Count on an hour or two per person capacity to do a snow shelter your first half-dozen times. Even a complex expedition tent generally takes no more than 10 or 15 minutes, although in a full-on blizzard, it can take an hour (nice thing about Biblers - I have put one up and fully staked it in 10 minutes in a full-on blizzard with measured 45 knot winds - actually dead-manned rather than staked). But, with a bit of experience, you can do a bolt-hole in 10 or 15 minutes, then enlarge it at leisure.

Another problem with snow shelters is that some people (like Jim) get claustrophobic in a shelter of the same size as a tent they feel comfortable in. Over the years of directing the snow camping course, I have had 3 or 4 people bail to a tent because of feeling "trapped". I have seen the roofs of snow shelters sag significantly when the weather was too warm and the roof too thin, and more importantly, when the roof was insufficiently domed. The only collapses I have seen were during the digging phase. There are ways to avoid this, but too long to go into here.