For what in the north lift houses on a pile?

On a reunion of Serega showed student's photos where he leaned out of a house window on "kury legs". To be exact - on piles. Svetka rather already Svetlana Mikhaelovna cried stridently as though just the call on a lesson rang out: "And I know, why the house on piles! In the north so build that the house snow did not bring. At them there in a night on 3 meters of snow piles". We turned to Serege: it is the truth? .