Quote:
Originally Posted by Elcarim
What do you call "little snow"? Of course, for us born and raised in Texas, ANY snow is a lot. Just curious how many inches of snowfall you average in your area.  |
One snow fall about once a week, followed by five or six days of sunny or cloudy weather. Most of the snow melts. So even though you may see a series of ten storms come through the built up accumulation is not big. An inch this week, an inch next week, an inch the following week, etc; does not build up to three inches.
When it builds up is when one snow layer gets rained on, the that night it freezes into a hard layer. If that layer can last until the next storm, then the layers can start to build up. I see this out in my fields. My driveway is up above the fields / forest on either side of the driveway. My driveway will be clear, while the ditch to either side may have two foot of built up layers of snow.
Last winter, towards the end we had one storm that dumped us with a foot of snow. They were calling for 18 inches.
However during the last two winters every week's storm, they call for these storms to give us 4 - 6 inches; we usually have seen 1 inch.
Our first winter here, we did not use our snow shovel all season. We were able to stomp paths to each car.
Last winter we did use it a bit. And certainly during that one storm in the spring we used it and our snow-thrower machine.
I have a long straight flat level driveway. For the most part, if I drive up and down it's length a dozen times, to pack down any snow. Then the following rain will wash away, and clear off my driveway. We do build up a layer of ice on the driveway, but since our driveway is flat and level, we do not really care about the ice on it. Sprinkle a little sand on it and even walking to the mail box is okay.
We have propane deliveries, and the propane truck driver freaks out when he sees two tire tracks six feet apart leading to our house. He does not know if our driveway has a steep ditch on either side [it does], or where he is going to slide. So he wants our driveway cleared twelve foot wide. If it were not for the propane delivery, I would not clear any path wider than our cars make.
We keep a path cleared from our front door to the cars, and over to the chickens and goats. Which is done mostly by stomping.
Once our garage is finished then our cars will be inside. Once our wrap-around porch is finished, then walking around to the chicken coop and goat pen, will be easier without much path clearing at all.
We have been driving two passenger cars both with front wheel drive, which works wonderfully here.
Today I ran some errands, and I noticed that the pavement is starting to ice up. Black Ice!
Well driving home, I got stuck behind a 4WD pickup truck. Without a layer of snow on the road, he has to keep his 4WD unengaged. So driving with rear wheel drive he would creep up to 45 mph, and begin fish-tailing, so he slowed down to 30mph. I followed him for four miles or so, waiting to get out of the denser populated stretch. His pickup could not handle the ice above 30 mph well, when I did pass him, I found that my little sedan with front wheel drive hugged the pavement nicely at 50mph. Now I do not like black ice, and I do slow way down entering curves. But on long straight aways, there is no need for these cars to keep it at 30mph. Not like there is for the rear wheel drive vehicles.
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