Two feet of snow forecast for Washington

I think the biggest difference between Colorado and the Washington DC area is preparedness. It's not unusual to get a 5 or 6 foot snowfall in some places in Colorado, and so people are well prepared for that, and they have the necessary equipment to deal with large quantities of snow. It's unusual to get even a foot of snow in Washington DC, and so they're just not prepared for the kind of hammering they're geting now (three feet of the stuff within a week). They just don't normally need much in the way of snow clearing equipment there, and so they don't have the equipment to remove that snow quickly and efficiently.

Here in Winnipeg, they really don't have dedicated "snow plows", but they do have a hydraulic plow accessory and sanding accessory for every dump truck the City has. So, if the weatherman is forcasting a heavy snowfall, then all those trucks get fitted with the plow attachments and they clear the main arteries in a co-ordinated manner, like this:



And, then a team of front end loaders will be working behind those trucks to clear the piles of snow they leave behind across intersections.



About the only place they actually collect the snow and remove it is in the down town core or places where a pile of snow on the intersection would make for a blind corner and people would end up in accidents cuz they couldn't see each other coming. They do that with snow blower attachments on front end loaders. They also have dump trucks co-ordinated to collect the snow and dump it on the banks of the Red River. The snow blower will blow the snow into the truck bucket, and another truck will follow behind. When the first truck is full, then the second one will move forward to take it's place, like this:



Otherwise, the snow just stays piled up at the intersections. The pile shrinks over the course of the winter because of the weight of the snow.

"Jet Blowers (five) - This equipment uses a jet engine to remove accumulated snow from the roadbed and deposit it a distance from the tracks so that it cannot slide back. This piece of equipment is used primarily to keep the yards clear."

I've also heard of huge dumpsters with jet engines inside - you shovel in snow and feed it jet fuel and it outputs warm water.

Eight to nine inches of snow in Dallas right now, AMAZING.:

It'll all be gone by 4p.m. tomorrow probably.


Snow Blankets North Texas

Wuzzat:

The car dealerships here use gasoline powered backpack leaf blowers to keep their cars free of snow. I'm thinking that if you have a powerful leaf blower, you could maybe use that on a windy day to clear your driveway. As long as you can get the snow into the air, the wind would carry it.

Nestor_Kelebay said:

Wuzzat:

The car dealerships here use gasoline powered backpack leaf blowers to keep their cars free of snow. I'm thinking that if you have a powerful leaf blower, you could maybe use that on a windy day to clear your driveway. As long as you can get the snow into the air, the wind would carry it.

Click to expand...

Probably useful at temps below freezing while the snow is still powdery.

The north has a different type of snow. - Something about the crystal shape.

When I lived in northern Michigan (lower peninsula) the never bothered to think about plowing with 3" since the cars on the roads would blow it away in an hour or two, unless is was caused by a south or SW wind. When we had the wet snow, they would know it was coming and fitted the plows to the dump trucks, but they always had the narrow Bobcat or similar on tracks to do all the sidewalks.

Often people would leave their cars in the driveway instead of the garage and drive away and then have less snow to blow. You also kicked off the chunks in the shopping center or Walmart lot before you went home. - You just learn and adjust.

Dick

What Mudmixer is saying about kicking off the big ice Stalagtites that form behind your car's tires is true. You need to kick them off sometwhere other than your driveway. Every winter I have tenants that come to me saying that their car is stuck in their parking spot and they can't get out. When I go and look, I find that a big hunk of that stuff has fallen off right behind a tire, and it's been driven over so it's stuck to the ground and frozen in place. They can't drive over it because the other tire just spins on the snow.

So, whenever I see those things in my parking lot, I toss them into the snowbank on the boulevard cuz it only takes a second to do that if they're still loose, but it takes a half hour to chop them up with an axe so the tenant can get out of their parking spot.

50 gals of 160F water shot into places that shovels can't touch will free a car supported by snow.

The stone shield may be the most fragile part of your undercarriage. Backing up in deep snow may overstress this part and cause it to take on shapes not envisioned by your car maker.

Yep, but when that water cools and freezes, you have a skating rink in your parking lot. Then some tenant is going to slip and fall on the ice, and how am I gonna say I couldn't see that coming?

I just hack up the ice with an axe and scatter the chips so the car can drive over it.

Cars here don't really have anything to stop stones being thrown up by the tires. I know you can buy them to put on your car, but it's generally only trucks that have mud flaps behind the rear-most tires. It's rare to see a car with anything like that, although I suppose there's nothing to stop people from putting something like that on their cars.

Forgot to say the air temp. has to be above freezing, although with ground temps rarely going below freezing here it may work with air temps slightly below freezing.

Wow- That's a heck of a lot of snow! It makes me not feel so bad for having our measly 4-6". Sure is beautiful, but I'm sure you're all sick of it.

Here's one of our snow blowers.

cool!.....

In this part of the country we are on the main line of the Santa Fe and Burlington Northern Railroads. About 140 trains per day go through here east to west and west to east. Freight from New York and Los Angeles and coal from Wyoming.

This time of year there is also one other type of train in use:

Now that's a snow blower for sure!

...and it works like a champ!

I think they could use some of your equipment out east...