Would those of you that grew up in places with real weather please enlighten those of us who grew up here in Seattle about two snow-related items?
1. How is it a good thing to shovel your sidewalk down to an extremely hard, very slightly lumpy, very slippery few centimeters of compacted snow-ice? Shoveling to a bare, wet sidewalk (maybe that involves salt?) seems to make sense, but creating this slick surface that crackles ominously when you walk on it seems worse than leaving the snow to pack down unevenly, giving you at least a chance of some traction when, say, going downhill.
2. Is there a term for the very small-gauge (quite a bit smaller than a BB) tiny balls of snow that were falling from the sky last night and a little bit this morning here at the Stranger Weathercenter? Here in Seattle, we famously have more than 100 different terms for rain, so we’re just curious.
- Josh Bis/Flickr
- At Cal Anderson Park. Current conditions at the Stranger Weathercenter: Main roads slushy but driveable; very, very light snow falling; gray sky; still approx. four inches of snow on the ground in the park! And the abovementioned sidewalk situation.
1) If you don’t shovel, that entire snow surface will turn to ice when stepped on. Salt helps a lot, but a thinner layer of snow/ice will melt quicker.
2) That is graupel.
That shoveling thing? Yeah, that only works when A) there’s no ice underneath (in Michigan snow does not automatically mean ice), or B) you can put down some goddamn salt. Which you cannot do here. Because the fishies don’t like it, which I don’t get, and I’m all for keeping the fishies happy, but I’m also considering asking my parents to ship me several bags of rock salt for my own sidewalk and driveway.
Yay for Calvin and Hobbes fans visiting Cal Anderson Park.
Shoveling is just another way for non-native Stranger writers to preen themselves about their superior upbringing. What a joke.
If you actually shovel the snow before it starts to melt or compact, you don’t get the the little chunks of ice at all. And, even if you do get ice below, @1 is correct that less is better.
What @1 said. Don’t shovel, and six inches of snow turns into two inches of ice that will take a long time to melt. Shovel, and a quarter-inch of ice will melt much quicker, especially if there’s bare sidewalk patches along the way.
The trick is to shovel before a bunch of people walk on your sidewalk, and to get as much off as possible. It’s easier to shovel two inches three times than six inches once.
hubby’s word for any rain/snow combo: “snizzle”
my word for cold nasty precipitation regardless of size, liquidity, or otherwise unspecified state: “crap”
Shovel as much as possible, and then sand on top of that for traction. May not be needed in colder climates, but where I grew up had today’s weather four months out of the year, and it’s the only way of dealing with it.
Well, if it’s going to snow in amounts measured in feet rather than inches, it’s better to shovel as it accumulates so you’re able to get out of your driveway.
Use sand if you can’t use salt.
After you shovel it down, the little bits left will melt nicely under some direct sunlight over the next few days.
Oh.
Wait.
Shovel, and then throw down those de-icer pellets.
@1, graupel. Thanks for the word.
If you get out the shovel the moment it stops falling: 1) you can clear 40 feet of sidewalk in less than 10 minutes, 2) everyone walking by as you do this will thank you profusely.
At least that was my experience yesterday.
We always referred to the little bits of ice/snow as ‘Sleet’ -not sure if that is correct, but that’s what we called it.
and yeah, getting to the shoveling/plowing etc before someone walks or drives on fresh snow is the best. otherwise you’re gonna have the compacted ice/snow stuff. I miss driving on that stuff for 5 months out of the year.
Shoveling is rarely a big deal in Seattle, since your snow rarely sticks around for very long. But here, in glorious Spokane, it’s a nightmare when people don’t shovel. There’s a house full of able-bodied redneck fucktards around the corner from me that is notorious for not shoveling. For six weeks it was nearly impossible to negotiate the sidewalk outside their house two winters ago.
I always make a point of wishing fire and brimstone on the lot whenever I pass by. I also give them dirty looks.
For the very first time in my life, I actually USE the term “grauple” as I learned in my climatology class in college. WIN.
I recommend sand, rather than salt. Sand sticks around longer than the salt, and will give continued traction even if snow keeps falling.
I grew up in a climate where it could snow a couple of feet at night sometimes, and could occasionally drift 4-6 feet under the right conditions. Shoveling was necessary in order to move at all. As a small child, the accumulated snow along side the shoveled sidewalk could easily reach chest level. This could go on for months at a time.
Here, I haven’t bothered to shovel the 2″ of snow off my sidewalk. Not worth the hassle. But if it snows 5″ or so on Wednesday, I’m breaking out the shovel.
If the snow is going to stick around then shoveling is critical even if you can’t remove all of the ice. The exposed ice will shrink even if below freezing through sublimation (like ice cubes in the freezer) or melting with some sun, but won’t if insulated by snow. Remember a couple of years ago when it made a big difference? Of course where the sidewalks remained un-shoveled, it was Greg Nickel’s fault…
If I don’t shovel my sidewalk and someone slips and hurts themselves, I am opening myself to a lawsuit. Even an attempt to clear the walk will hold up in court versus no attempt at all. It doesn’t get more east coast than that, sadly.
A) Shovel early. Sweep, even, if no shovel.
B) Walk on uncompacted snow with short strides to not fall down go boom.
1. for entertainment
2. hail
Remove the light dusting of snow we get with a broom. It gets rid of the snow better than a shovel when dealing with small amounts.
Here is some more helpful snow hints based on watching drivers on slick icy Kent East Hill.
* If driving a pickup truck, with no weight in the bed, assume that your tires are made of magical road gripping velcro that allows you to peel out of a driveway at 45 mph into street traffic, and execute a 90 without sliding.
* Zoom up to the pedestrian crosswalk at highway speeds. The more people in between the white lines the better.
* As number 1 said, make sure that your parking lot has as much grip as an ice hockey rink and don’t bother to salt or apply melt after it ices up, even though half your customers are on crutches, walkers or U-Scoots.
Don’t use de-icer unless you’re the sort of person that enjoys burning animals’ paws.
1. How is it a good thing to shovel your sidewalk down to an extremely hard, very slightly lumpy, very slippery few centimeters of compacted snow-ice?
It’s not. What you should use for that is a sidewalk ice scraper. More work than shoveling but effective at getting that remaining stuff off the sidewalk. When I was a kid in Minnesota, we never left that on our sidewalk.
2. Is there a term for the very small-gauge (quite a bit smaller than a BB) tiny balls of snow that were falling from the sky last night and a little bit this morning here at the Stranger Weathercenter?
An old Norse term: snøhumverskagluftafordisnartkjem. Loosely tranlated, it means: whathummerdrivershavesnow.
Minnesotan here.
1) Yes, shovel, even if it’s already packed down. If someone slips and falls, they can sue, and you might also be opening yourself up to a fine if your city has snow removal requirements. As a frequent pedestrian, I’d rather walk on a thin layer of crackling ice than a really thick layer of snow and/or ice. Kitty litter is an alternative to sand if you want to increase traction.
2) I’ve always just called that frozen rain.
It should be noted as well, salt is only “bad for the fishes” (@2) in those by-the-truckload multi-ton quantities often utilized by DOT’s for keeping roadways clear.
The 5lb bag of rocksalt you use to clear your sidewalk, on the other hand, doesn’t really bother our ichthyological neighbors much at all.
So glad that last year I paid a little extra for the steel tip snow shovel. I didnt’ get to the shoveling quick enough, so I was able to drop the shovel tip down on it hard, cracking the the ice into easily scooped shards. Also very glad I bought the shovel with the bend in it the middle. Totally worth it.
Salt that runs with meltwater into bodies of saltwater is not so bad, but when it runs into freshwater and collects in low-lying wetlands it is devastating to fish, plants and many vital organisms. The reason that there are historical references to sowing enenmies’ fields with salt, is that it was an efective way of destroyng their economy. Their land became useless for cultivation. So use salt sparingly, and not near flower beds. As other people have said, shoveling is best.
[1.] Get a metal shovel or a steel-tipped shovel and shovel during the snow fall.
[2.] If you don’t, the walk will turn into a sheet of trampled down ice that will be the width of one set of shoes that will be slippery as all get out.
[3.] Then, if you want to clear the snow, you’ll need an ice chopper– it’s a handle attached to a flat hoe-head. It sucks.
[4.] Salt. Environmental regulations prohibiting salt are for commie pinkos who hate America and don’t deal with regular snow fall.
[5.] Drew Caray joke said it best– “All we want to know in Cleveland is where the hell’s all that global warming we’ve been hearing so much about. That’s all they ever do in the winter, stand outside with an aerosol can. >ssst< That’s right. Fuck the grandkids. I’m cold now.”
IL for 32 years, MN for 6, 2nd year in CO: I know from snow. Shovel like a Chicago election, early and often. If you get the snowfall of total devastation, waiting until it’s over is a good way to end up housebound. The difference between snow in the midwest and snow in Denver seems to be the moisture content in the snow. The higher humidity levels in the midwest and the snow systems being fed by the gulf stream yields really wet heavy snow, compared to the dry fluffy stuff in Colorado. I would imagine that the Northwest, being soggy, would get extremelly wet heavy snow–try to move 15 inches of that is asking for a coronary episode at the end of the driveway.
You can use salt and chemical deicers. There’s no law against it. But good luck finding any, every store in Seattle sold out today.
You start shoveling as the snow fall starts to die down. The trick is, to clear the sidewalk before people start impacting the snow into ice. Sometimes you have to shovel the sidewalk more than once, but it’s really not that hard to shovel 100 feet of walk when it has light newly fallen snow on it. It’s only a pain in the ass after it’s been compacted into ice.
Shoveling newly fallen snow is actually kind of pleasant, (if you don’t have an acre of driveway to clear). It’s a nice work out.
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