In cities that are far enough south that snow isn’t a real concern (say, Orlando), what do they do in the rare event of a snowfall? Just wait for it to melt?
Well a front end loader or a grader could be used to clear snow (though the grader would probably not have the side plow doohickey).
Brian
Although it may get cold enough for it to snow in Orlando, it isn’t likely to be cold enough for the snow to collect on the ground (IME, that is, having spent some of my childhood in Orlando; As I recall, there were mornings that it was cold enough for us to grow icicles [sp?] with the hose, but it wasn’t cold enough to sustain snowfall). In the rare case that it does snow, it’s just flurries, which melt by the time they reach earth. That’s why there are no snow plows to begin with.
Precisely. I remember crossing from Virginia into North Carolina while still living up north and on a winter vacation that corresponded with a freak snowfall, and seeing traffic lined up for seven miles waiting for two large construction graders to slo-o-o-o-wly scrape Interstate 95 clear.
Raleigh bought its first dedicated snowplow attachments only a few years ago; before that, it had been the custom to wait until later in the day when thesnow would melt, or if a heavy enough snofall, break out the construction equipment.
I lived in St. Louis city for about 45 years and they NEVER plowed anything but designated snow routes. These were main streets that had signs posted. In fact, when I was young, they just mounted snow plows on the front of the city’s trash trucks when it snowed. Later, they switched to using street department trucks. I used to dig out a parking spot in front of my house in bad snows; woe be unto the neighbor who stole my spot! Heh, even when one of the nuns did it, I dug out a new spot for myself and piled all the newly-removed snow in a wall around her car, which was parked in front of my house.
But sometimes, the snow would stay for a month or two, and streets that didn’t get plowed and didn’t have enough traffic to melt the snow would end up paved in rutted ice.
How far south do you want to go? My family once spent a couple of weeks in July in the City of the Blue Mountains, which is just west of Sydney in Australia. While we were there, they had an inch or two of snow, and that closed all thr roads, including the main highway west from Sydney, so presumably neither the city nor the state had any snow ploughs available.
Sounds to me that they just call a snow day. If it’s not going to accumulate since the ground is warm, there is really no reason to plow it.
DC is probably a better example of this.
In the mountains of Colorado, we use just about every type of equipment to clear roads. Typical duel axle trucks for the highways. HUGE 4x4 trucks and graders for less traveled roads. and Articulated loaders with 12-16 foot blades on them for parking lots and such.
A couple of times a year they will use a loader with a blower on front to throw the snow back so the plows have a place to put it.
I’ll be plowing today myself. But just my driveway and perhaps a portion of my road. I use an old 4x4 truck chained up on all 4 wheels.
Bolding mine. This is just stunning to me. An inch or two of snow closed roads? 
It’s not just there: an inch or two of snow in Washington DC shuts down the Federal Government. I was down once when about an inch fell and everything stopped. It was weather that wouldn’t even cause a blip up in Schenectady.
It doesn’t surprise me. In places where folks aren’t used to snow, or equipped to deal with it, even a tiny amount can cause chaos. I had a similar experience when I lived in Kent, South East England. An inch of snow paralysed the whole area.
That just stuns me. With a little bit of common sense, a tiny bit of snow is not hard to deal with at all.
An INCH paralysed the whole area? :eek:
It’s snowed a measurable amount in San Francisco I think 4 times in the last hundred years, all less than an inch. Last significant accumulation (4 inches) was in 1887, and the planet’s not exactly getting any colder. I don’t doubt more than an inch or so (or serious ice) would completely shut the city down. There’s no reason to waste money on plows, and because of the grade many streets would be hard to clear with make-shift plows, but impossible to drive on with a layer of snow/ice. On the other hand, snow is not far off (unlike, say, florida), and you could have plows in the city from the Sierra in a few hours, assuming the storm hadn’t dumped 2 feet at elevations.
I remember a storm that socked the whole easter seaboard back in the early 90’s when I lived back there. We had 2 1/2 feet in NJ, they had 5 or more in Upstate NJ/New England. I remember watching on the news about an inch of snow completely shutting down Atlanta, because they had no plows.
It did indeed paralyse the area. I think it comes down to what one is used to. To you and I, the basic procedures for dealing with snow do indeed seem to be common sense, but that’s because we’re familiar with the stuff.
One example - as the snow fell, I was driving on the main Rochester-London highway. People were crawling along, barely above walking pace, because they had no idea how to drive in snow. The effect was to allow accumulation on the pavement, and if the drivers had maintained a reasonable speed, it simply wouldn’t have happened. Fortunately there is snow-clearing equipment available there, despite the fact that occasions when it’s needed are few and far between. But for a while, nobody was going anywhere. Well, except me.
Paul is right. How did you pick up your ‘common sense’ ability to drive in the snow? From driving in the snow, of course. If you’ve only driven 3 times in the snow in your whole lifetime, you won’t have that skill-set.
To the OP: here in Central Mississippi, the DOT/City/County will put out sand if they have it. School districts may elect to close the school and send kids home. Ostensibly this is for the safety of bus-riding students.
If you consider that we haven’t had a ‘snow day’ for school kids in at least 5 years, I think you can see why this is the norm.
It still astounds me. Can these folks drive on a gravel road? Do they no nothing about the dynamics of driving?
I live in a snow covered area. The tourists deal with it in rental cars. It isn’t great, but it sure doesn’t shut things down.
An inch or two of snow? Shuts things down? How long can that snow stay on the road, 20 minutes?
I’m serious here. I know about ‘black ice’ believe me. But wouldn’t a couple of inches of snow disappear pretty quickly?
I grew up in Northern Louisiana which certainly isn’t known for its snowfall. It snowed enough to stick to the ground about 5 times when I was growing up and all but two of those times was less than an inch. However, we didn’t have snowplows or sanding and salting trucks at all. More importantly, there was a serious institutional fear of snow and ice.
School administrators didn’t want to deal with any potential problems with school buses so they would shut the schools down at the drop of a hat if there was any early morning threat of ice or snow. We actually got a fair number of “snow days” but they weren’t really related to snow. The concern was that small bridges would develop black ice much more quickly than the regular parts of the road and it would be dangerous for the school buses.
Well, that was the point of the example I gave - snow won’t last long on the road if people maintain a decent speed, but not everyone realises this. It seems like common sense to me or you, but certainly not to inexperienced folks.
And people who don’t regularly experience snow are shit scared of it. They drive accordingly, or not at all.
My theory about people who can’t drive in snow is twofold:
1 - what everyone else is saying: if you’ve only driven in snow twice in your life, it’s scary, you don’t know what to do, etc. etc.
2 - Non-snow cities have no clue how to deal with snow, which makes driving even harder. If your only experience driving in snow is that time that Atlanta (or wherever) got 4 inches, and the city didn’t deal with it well, you’re even more scared.
Even places that get snow every winter (I’m looking at you, Boulder) often don’t spend the money to really take care of it. Living in the UP, the one thing I can say is the cities know how to make driving on snow easy. Snowplows run continuously through the night if it’s snowing; they generously salt and sand the roads, ALL the roads, not just intersections and busy streets. And they’ve probably got a few more tricks up their sleeves as well.
Boulder and other cities in Colorado’s front range, however, take short cuts. It generally is more treacherous to drive there in the snow, because you can’t count on the roads being properly cleared/sanded/whatever.
I’m not sure gravel road = snowy road. I’m also not sure our city folks drive much on gravel roads.
Probably watching y’all who DO know how to operate. It’s a lot easier to do something new if you have a lot of people right there showing you how, n’est pas?
I wouldn’t say it shuts things down - certainly not the interstate or main highways - but people don’t like to drive in it. So most schools will close (see Shagnasty’s point about liability) and some businesses will; many people will go home and stay there.
The longest I’ve personally seen snow stay around was about two weeks in the winter of 1988. That was in North Mississippi though, which gets a lot more snow than Central Miss. Here it probably is a matter of hours.
Another point I’ll make here is about driving while it’s snowing. You know how sometimes the snow kind of ‘comes at you’? It can be kind of hypnotizing. I think that freaks Southern drivers out. That’s an opinion and properly shouldn’t be in GQ, but there ya go.
Less than an inch closed down many major thoroughfares in the New Orleans area during the locally-famous snow of Christmas Day, 2004. Many of the major local drags pass over water … ice was probably the concern.
I’m going to check on that “less than an inch” thing … it may have gone in the books as an inch. People’s lawns were well-covered, but sprigs of green poked through all over. There was little real accumulation in the street.