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I was watching a news show that reported some cities in the Northeast don't have enough room to put the snow when they clear the streets. Where do they put the snow? Does it go out in the countryside like land fills\ trash sites? Do they put it in park land? Do people rent their property out to these cities to store the snow? Seems like they should just spray boiling water over the snow to melt it on the spot.
It piles up everywhere. By winter's end (here in west MI) there will be tons upon tons of snow hills everywhere. It gets dangerous at times because they block your view, say pulling out of a subdivision on to a major road. Places like malls and big grocery stores lose dozens of parking spaces due to the snow piling up.
In DC after the great storms this year, the local governments used bulldozers to put snow into dump trucks, which put the snow in landfills, parks etc.
The DC government also owns a snow melter, which is positioned over a storm drain. It can melt a ton of snow apparently; but our wonderful government actually forgot that we owned one and it just deployed it last week, when most of the snow's already melted. Fail.
And no, simply melting it doesn't help. Unless it drains into a storm drain, it's gonna refreeze as ice. You either gotta do that, or transport it somewhere, or evaporate it.
LOL! melt it. Then the entire place turns into a skating rink.
Sorry, it is just odd to think that some people can't picture the amount of snow you are talking about. To put it into perspective; when I lived in Northern Maine my driveway was 10' wide and 75' long. By the end of an average winter I would have snow banks 10' tall that were 30' wide and 150' long from removing the snow from just the driveway. The amount is staggering when you deal with it on a citywide scale. Different areas deal with it in different ways depending on what is easiest for the road crews. Some haul it to huge empty fields on the outside of town and pile it high with front-end loaders. Some take it to vacant lots all over the city, others have enough room on the sides of the streets to just plow it off to the side in all but the main downtown district which they haul away. When you get an unusual winter and all those nooks and crannys all over the city are full to capacity, then they have to get creative and look for more empty lots/fields, etc... to haul the excess snow. Most already know where these are, but haven't contracted with the owners before hand for dumping the snow, so they end up scrambling to work something out between the city and the owners.
Location: from houstoner to bostoner to new yorker to new jerseyite ;)
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Here what doesn't melt quickly or get the ice melt (or whatever it's called, comes in buckets) they pile up in parking lots or along the side of the road, out of the way. There are no sidewalks here in winter. It was a real trip coming from Texas and driving around and seeing mini-mountains of snow everywhere for the first time, let me tell you. LOL
Here what doesn't melt quickly or get the ice melt (or whatever it's called, comes in buckets) they pile up in parking lots or along the side of the road, out of the way. There are no sidewalks here in winter. It was a real trip coming from Texas and driving around and seeing mini-mountains of snow everywhere for the first time, let me tell you. LOL
That sounds beautiful. Do kids make snow forts or igloos?
In NYC, it's amazing how the snow seems to disappear as fast as it comes. Store owners and building managers shovel & salt their sidewalks over and over again, throwing the snow into the street. The traffic and salt spreaders+plows pass frequently and compact/thin out the snow and push it to the curb. Despite having 21 inches of snow fall last Friday, the sidewalks and streets in Midtown Manhattan were clear during almost the entire storm. Walking to and from work I didn't even need to have my boots on.
Location: from houstoner to bostoner to new yorker to new jerseyite ;)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by californio sur
That sounds beautiful. Do kids make snow forts or igloos?
Haha... I'm sure they do with the snow in their yards. It's beautiful for a while, then it starts turning muddy and slushy.
They also shovel and plow frequently and spread salt as lammius mentioned. The roads usually aren't a problem at all because they get to work right away. The Boston area gets more snow than NYC/NJ so the excess sticks around here a lot longer than it does there.
Here they push it to the side of the street where it melts within a couple of days (right under a week if its a blizzard), most Winter days here are in the 40's so I guess that helps.
This Winter they had to borrow a snow melter truck in from Canada to use in Baltimore because it was too much snow.
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