You think your snow graders are mythical?!? For decades, Calgary’s stated snow removal policy was, “Wait for a chinook - it’ll melt the snow.” :eek:
Calgary gets an average annual 50 inches of snow; Montreal gets an average 86 inches. I think we’re in our snowy time now - it seems like we get a month or two of lots of snowfalls, then it stops for quite a while.
I can vouch for Gorsnak’s sighting - I saw a grader as well. Here in S’toon for the week and mighty grateful for my parka. I’ve been away too long; I forgot about the “dry” cold and the havoc static plays with the hair. I look like I grabbed the static generator at the Science Centre.
Also, “dry” cold is still cold.
And why does the only decent downtown place to shop (Midtown Plaza) close at 6:00!? I’m not even out of my meeting then!
Winter shrinkage. That’s why February is a short month.
As usual, we have to look to Montréal for the real scoop on how to deal with snow.
Don’t speak ill of the Laurentians. They’re mountains. If you were as old as they are, you’d look like hills too !
Oh, the Laurentians. I was thinking of Monteregie for some reason.
I’ll have to keep this in mind for the next time I’m in Calgary. BBQ brisket and beer … mmmmm!
(Maybe an idea for a Calgary Dopefest.)
It’s the same here. After an early December storm a few years ago, roads were absolutely impassable–we’re talking eight-foot drifts completely blocking our street. Residents screamed at the city to get rid of the stuff. It did, and the city’s snow removal budget was exhausted by mid-December.
Then, later in the year (probably May), when tax bills were sent out, the same residents screamed at the tax increase; claiming, “we don’t need snow removal; a chinook will remove it.” Short memories indeed.
Question about snow removal budgets. I’ve always heard of places where the snow removal budget was exhausted by mid December and was never sure, is it a yearly budget that starts anew in January so the city miscalculated by a couple of weeks or is this the entire winter budget and the city blew its entire wad over the course of 3 weeks of snow? If it is the second then I’ve got to ask, WFT? Its not like we are in Florida and this is a freak storm that we had no idea about. This is Canada FFS. You have to expect a shit ton of snow over the course of the winter.
I have no idea , but I think the city’s (any city’s) fiscal year is different from the calendar year. Given that here in Alberta, property taxes are due the end of June, I’d guess that the city’s fiscal year runs July 1 to June 30, which means that the annual snow budget should cover an entire fiscal year.
I know that this is Canada, and we should expect a helluva lot of snow, but the idea that “chinooks will melt the snow” is still pretty strong locally.
And it costs a lot to clear the snow as opposed to just plowing it. A “warm” winter will allow you to plow and have the weather keep the bank size down.
A massive dump of snow normally needs to be put into trucks and dumped into the river or a specific dump site. That’s a lot of overtime and a lot of trucks/blowers/plows to have to account for - especially if you hadn’t expected more than 1 of those kinds of storms.
That’s all well and good but you’d think that, given the records available of snow removal costs for the last few decades, a municipality would be able to budget for snow removal in such a way as to avoid blowing through the whole lot in three weeks unless a disaster level snowfall occurs.
Maybe but basing costs on historic costs per storm would fail to take into account the growth in road surfaces to be plowed due to municipal growth. More suburbs mean more niggling little roads to clear and longer stretches of highway to patrol.
If I get a chance I’ll see if the City of Ottawa has any decent snow budget information floating around
(bolding mine)
No longer an option, I must say, due to the pollution caused by all that “dirty” (salt and what nots) snow.
Given Halifax still (or recently did) just dump sewage into the harbour it might very well be an option depending on where you live.
Well, in Montreal, it is a no-no. Depending on the year, I’ve seen hills of snow lasting in June-July (of course, by then, they were much reduced but you could still see patches of the white stuff).
This was the reason I drove a jeep when I lived in Calgary. My little suburban street looked like a mountain trail for at least 2 weeks a year.
But it can be very erratic. In 1997-1998 in Regina, there was no snow until January 1998. Not “not much snow” in November and December of 1997 - no snow. We had a green-brown Christmas.
And then there was last year - we got more snow in November 2012 than we had the entire winter of 2011-2012 - and it kept snowing in December, and January, and February, and March, and April, with scattered flurries in May. (I started a few whiny threads about it, which I normally don’t this is Canada, after all.
The point is that one can budget all one wants, but snow is unpredictable .
Also even if the volumes are the same how and when it falls impacts the budget too.
You have a small staff working all the time so if you get small regular snowfall that staff can handle things without calling in backups and paying for overtime. Huge dumps strain the system even when they’re followed by weeks of no additional snow at all.
Have to say, the Regina snow removal is quite prompt. They focus on the main arteries first, then secondary streets, then residential streets, so it may be a few days after a big snowfall before your street gets ploughed, but they do get to it.