Snow and ice removal

[webny99]

Yes, my experience with Minnesota, North Dakota, and one winter trip to Montana has been that they plow snow a lot less than we do here in the Great Lakes snow belt. That's because temperatures are that much colder on average, so the heavy salting we do here doesn't work as well there. Almost everyone has 4WD and just seem to accept that the roads won't be clear right after a big snowfall - and in fact, the roads are actually safer to drive with a layer of hard snowpack than trying to clear them to blacktop and being left with a slick, slushy mix.

I don't agree with that at all.  A hard snowpack is awful to drive on.

Hard snowpack that has sand on it is fine on unpaved roads.  I'm often able to go as fast on such as I usually do during the summer.  But paved roads are an entirely different story.  Differences in albedo and radiation absorbtion mean that snowpack on pavement usually turns to ice...much more so than on unpaved roads.

Yes, that is my experience.  Plus they tend to get "potholes" that make them bumpy and slippery.

Yes, but I still think I'd rather hard snowpack if it's too cold for salt to be effective. Attempting to clear the roads down to blacktop and leaving a slippery slushy mix is even worse.

[jeffandnicole]

Yes, my experience with Minnesota, North Dakota, and one winter trip to Montana has been that they plow snow a lot less than we do here in the Great Lakes snow belt. That's because temperatures are that much colder on average, so the heavy salting we do here doesn't work as well there. Almost everyone has 4WD and just seem to accept that the roads won't be clear right after a big snowfall - and in fact, the roads are actually safer to drive with a layer of hard snowpack than trying to clear them to blacktop and being left with a slick, slushy mix.

I don't agree with that at all.  A hard snowpack is awful to drive on.

Hard snowpack that has sand on it is fine on unpaved roads.  I'm often able to go as fast on such as I usually do during the summer.  But paved roads are an entirely different story.  Differences in albedo and radiation absorbtion mean that snowpack on pavement usually turns to ice...much more so than on unpaved roads.

Yes, that is my experience.  Plus they tend to get "potholes" that make them bumpy and slippery.

Yes, but I still think I'd rather hard snowpack if it's too cold for salt to be effective. Attempting to clear the roads down to blacktop and leaving a slippery slushy mix is even worse.

Slush is fine when there's salt mixed it. It probably won't refreeze.

Snowpack is fine unless it freezes into ice.

[JREwing78]

Yes, my experience with Minnesota, North Dakota, and one winter trip to Montana has been that they plow snow a lot less than we do here in the Great Lakes snow belt. That's because temperatures are that much colder on average, so the heavy salting we do here doesn't work as well there. Almost everyone has 4WD and just seem to accept that the roads won't be clear right after a big snowfall - and in fact, the roads are actually safer to drive with a layer of hard snowpack than trying to clear them to blacktop and being left with a slick, slushy mix.

I don't agree with that at all.  A hard snowpack is awful to drive on.

Hard snowpack that has sand on it is fine on unpaved roads.  I'm often able to go as fast on such as I usually do during the summer.  But paved roads are an entirely different story.  Differences in albedo and radiation absorbtion mean that snowpack on pavement usually turns to ice...much more so than on unpaved roads.

Yes, that is my experience.  Plus they tend to get "potholes" that make them bumpy and slippery.

Yes, but I still think I'd rather hard snowpack if it's too cold for salt to be effective. Attempting to clear the roads down to blacktop and leaving a slippery slushy mix is even worse.

I spent my college years in the snowbelt in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. They absolutely revert to hard snowpack with sand in colder conditions, and that's generally fine. One isn't going to drive hard and aggressive in those conditions, and the snowpack tends to lock in the sand cover well. The big point of the plows is to punch through the snowdrifts that would otherwise make the roads impassible.

Will potholes in the snowpack form? Yes, but at that point it either snows again and smooths everything out, or it warms up enough the plows can get down to bare pavement.

[6a]

I was in Fairbanks, Alaska during the winter once (it is as advertised). They use road graders and gravel.

In Northern California, I ran across a quite hillbilly setup for crushing volcanic boulders to use on snow. Truly, ingenuity knows no bounds.

[JayhawkCO]

I decided today I'm going to buy what is essentially a flamethrower so that I don't have to shovel anymore. Why not just melt the stuff instead of moving it back and forth?

[triplemultiplex]

Don't scare the neighbors with it!

[kalvado]

I decided today I'm going to buy what is essentially a flamethrower so that I don't have to shovel anymore. Why not just melt the stuff instead of moving it back and forth?

Did you buy skates as well?

[JayhawkCO]

I decided today I'm going to buy what is essentially a flamethrower so that I don't have to shovel anymore. Why not just melt the stuff instead of moving it back and forth?

Did you buy skates as well?

whYqzqwt awww right 2qqq

I decided today I'm going to buy what is essentially a flamethrower so that I don't have to shovel anymore. Why not just melt the stuff instead of moving it back and forth?

Did you buy skates as well?

I was formerly a hockey player. No need.

[mgk920]

I don't have any links handy but I did see some articles in recent weeks that were discussing a noticeable increase of measured salinity in bodies of water in the Great Lakes region.  Might were relatively soon be seeing a serious legislative and even legal attempt to limit on the use of salt in snow and ice control?

mike

[kalvado]

I don't have any links handy but I did see some articles in recent weeks that were discussing a noticeable increase of measured salinity in bodies of water in the Great Lakes region.  Might were relatively soon be seeing a serious legislative and even legal attempt to limit on the use of salt in snow and ice control?

mike

Great lakes are not alone, nor road salt is the only source. Limiting the amount of road salt probably has to happen.
There were some articles about how salt was used in NY for Lake Placid Olympics, and that was supposed to be a one-off event - but became the new normal.

[JREwing78]

I decided today I'm going to buy what is essentially a flamethrower so that I don't have to shovel anymore. Why not just melt the stuff instead of moving it back and forth?

Someone watch an episode of Top Gear recently? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZBG4ryNbmdg

[Fredddie]

In Des Moines, the city will brine the busier streets and bridges at least 12 hours out when a storm is expected.  Here, super cold and snow don't really happen at the same time (that's not to say it never happens) so the brining, plowing, salting, plowing cycle works pretty well.

[6a]

I decided today I'm going to buy what is essentially a flamethrower so that I don't have to shovel anymore. Why not just melt the stuff instead of moving it back and forth?

Pro tip: road flares don't work lol

[kalvado]

I decided today I'm going to buy what is essentially a flamethrower so that I don't have to shovel anymore. Why not just melt the stuff instead of moving it back and forth?

Pro tip: road flares don't work lol

Quick estimate - ice melting requires 334 J/gram, propane burn generates 50 kJ/gram. So 1 weight of propane can melt 150 weights of snow ideally, I would plan for 50 realistically
My driveway is 2 car wide, and not too long; 20x60' or so. We had something like 0.5" precipitations (6" of snow) on Monday, for about 2200 lb of snow on a driveway.
Sounds like 2 standard 20 lb propane tanks would do the job for me. I wonder if plowing is just faster, though...   

[JayhawkCO]

Yeah. I realized that I can't do the whole driveway with it, but I can get the tough stuff. I can probably use our leaf blower to get the easy stuff away since our snow is so dry.

[J N Winkler]

I have considered using a heat gun to clear black ice from an area immediately in front of our porch that gets absolutely no sun in the winter.  Other than that, I just try to shovel the snow in three-inch lifts.  Any additional accumulation costs more in effort per inch to shovel off.

[Scott5114]

As an Oklahoman, my snow and ice protocol is to purchase a few days' worth of groceries before the storm, then simply not leave the house until the snow melts. We got 3" or so yesterday and it's already more or less melted.

[Max Rockatansky]

How snow removal on CA 89 at Emerald Bay is presently going:

https://www.facebook.com/100064705745444/posts/pfbid0TP1mmH9SAhn74rm92x9dFHuZcNsFTgDb5kVzKv2W6ZsnDLWJREdAQpB74zsrPY16l/?mibextid=cr9u03

[JayhawkCO]

As an Oklahoman, my snow and ice protocol is to purchase a few days' worth of groceries before the storm, then simply not leave the house until the snow melts. We got 3" or so yesterday and it's already more or less melted.

Normally the case here (except for our yearly Spring snow dump) too, but not this year. I posted in the weather thread that this is the first time since 2010 that we haven't had a 60° day in January.

[US 89]

As an Oklahoman, my snow and ice protocol is to purchase a few days' worth of groceries before the storm, then simply not leave the house until the snow melts. We got 3" or so yesterday and it's already more or less melted.

Normally the case here (except for our yearly Spring snow dump) too, but not this year. I posted in the weather thread that this is the first time since 2010 that we haven't had a 60° day in January.

See, that actually comes as a big surprise to me, being from Salt Lake which I typically think of as being very similar if not a bit warmer than Denver (as it is 1000 feet lower). SLC almost never gets the big cold snaps that Denver does thanks to its location on the other side of the Rockies, and when it does it doesn't get nearly as cold. The same system that brought Denver down to -24 in December only took Salt Lake down to 17 (though it did drop to 12 a few days before that).

At any rate, a typical January in Salt Lake will see just a small handful of days in the 50s. The last time it hit 60 in January was 2003, and there have been six years since then where it didn't even break 50. I suppose that's a consequence of stronger inversions with mountains on both sides.

[mgk920]

Yeah. I realized that I can't do the whole driveway with it, but I can get the tough stuff. I can probably use our leaf blower to get the easy stuff away since our snow is so dry.

I've seen people use lawn mowers to clear light coatings of dry powder snow from sidewalks.  OTOH, railroads have been known to use jet engines that are mounted on 'hi-rail' equipped maintenance trucks to clear snow from switches.

Mike

[kalvado]

Yeah. I realized that I can't do the whole driveway with it, but I can get the tough stuff. I can probably use our leaf blower to get the easy stuff away since our snow is so dry.

I've seen people use lawn mowers to clear light coatings of dry powder snow from sidewalks.  OTOH, railroads have been known to use jet engines that are mounted on 'hi-rail' equipped maintenance trucks to clear snow from switches.

Mike

Jet engine is a snow blower on steroids....

[Dirt Roads]

OTOH, railroads have been known to use jet engines that are mounted on 'hi-rail' equipped maintenance trucks to clear snow from switches.

Wow, that brings back memories.  I was part of a railroad study to determine the effectiveness of wayside-mounted jet engines [to avoid snow and ice buildup] on switches.  We had some heavy snows during my time, and the jet blower worked quite well (even through a light ice storm event).  Most of my locations in Southwest Pennsylvania were snow melters (traditional blowers operated with fuel oil heaters); and before I moved there I worked on the installation of a clip-mounted ceramic heater-element installation at one location on that same territory.  Another location was damaged in a minor derailment and we replaced it with a propane-fired snow melter.  All those other systems had a few problems here-and-there.

[triplemultiplex]

Sublimation is my friend for snow clearing.  I almost never use any salt because usually if one scrapes off the snow from pavement before it gets compacted by foot or vehicle traffic, the residual will sublimate over the next few hours due to the dry air that tends to follow snow events.  Even if there's a bit of ice, that too, will sublimate enough to where it no longer is slippery.

Maybe 1 out of every 10 snowfalls justify salting for what I have to clear.  And that's been consistent for me all over this state for a quarter century.

[US 89]

The thing about sublimation is it more or less requires sun. When I was growing up in Utah, we lived in a house with a north-facing driveway, so it was in the shade all winter long. Salt was a necessity especially when we had heavier, wetter snow, which would usually form icy layers on the bottom especially if the storm started with a period of rain. The advantage at least for Salt Lake is it rarely ever drops below 10F or so, so it's almost always warm enough for salt to be effective. The same cannot be said for the upper Midwest.

My parents now live in a house with a south-facing driveway, which was actually a huge factor in that moving decision.