By contrast, Vancouver, BC's idea of clearing one inch of snow is to dump two inches of river sand on it that will still be there in July, destroying your bicycle's drive system.
How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
61–70 of 89 posts
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#62I would love to see that first bulldozer at work. I'm a little amazed because snow becomes incredibly heavy and hard to move/push when it's packed. As the blade moves forward, that dozer will quickly have to use incredible force to move forward. I experienced this first-hand last summer when I was driving my old Land Rover across the country. I was solo, way up in the very remote Henry Mountains [1] of Utah, about to…
Sounds like you bottomed out. At that point ordinary vehicles no longer get traction from the wheels because they don't have enough weight on them, in addition to the fact that being caught in the snow means you need more traction to move.
Treaded vehicles don't have this problem if the snow is reasonably compact or they have wide enough tracks to avoid sinking in, as do snowcats or snowmobiles.
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#63Earlier quoted context omitted.
Remember also that there's a big difference between the fluffy powder they're plowing in northern Japan and the wet stuff you drove your landie into.
...And some places have "lighter" snow than others. I have seen experiments, where you fill a large glass with snow from the alps - and another with snow from the Rockies (US/Canada). When melted, there is only half the water in the glass from the Rockies - which is why it is powder-heaven for snow-freaks (such as myself). I have no idea about the science - why it is this way.
Try that same experiment with a snow bank in late May from both places and you'll likely find it's equally compact once the snow pack is at 32F throughout and starting to form what is known in the trade as firn. [1]
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#64"Syracuse, New York, often dubbed the snowiest city in the United States, receives, on average, 117 inches of snow a year. " Not even close. Valdez, Alaska averages 305.8 inches per year.
So what happens when all that stuff starts melting?
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#65I would love to see that first bulldozer at work. I'm a little amazed because snow becomes incredibly heavy and hard to move/push when it's packed. As the blade moves forward, that dozer will quickly have to use incredible force to move forward. I experienced this first-hand last summer when I was driving my old Land Rover across the country. I was solo, way up in the very remote Henry Mountains [1] of Utah, about to…
In glacier national park they use excavators for the first passes.
That's for Going to the Sun road. They don't usually punch a hole through it until May or June, either.
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
Compared to rocks, ice is not that dense. You can try yourself: it's easy to pickup a big chunk of ice, even with a shovel, while a similarly sized rock is impossible to lift.
And ice, quite surprisingly, is less dense than water. There are not many solids that are less dense than their liquid form.
Exactly one: water/ice
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
And ice, quite surprisingly, is less dense than water. There are not many solids that are less dense than their liquid form.
Exactly one: water/ice
"Other substances that expand on freezing are acetic acid, silicon, gallium,[35] germanium, bismuth, plutonium and also chemical compounds that form spacious crystal lattices with tetrahedral coordination."[0]
[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Properties_of_water#Density_of...
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
And ice, quite surprisingly, is less dense than water. There are not many solids that are less dense than their liquid form.
Exactly one: water/ice
There's more than water. A lot of things that freeze into a crystal lattice can be less dense than their liquid states. Silicon dioxide is another IIRC.
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#69I would love to see that first bulldozer at work. I'm a little amazed because snow becomes incredibly heavy and hard to move/push when it's packed. As the blade moves forward, that dozer will quickly have to use incredible force to move forward. I experienced this first-hand last summer when I was driving my old Land Rover across the country. I was solo, way up in the very remote Henry Mountains [1] of Utah, about to…
One of the reasons to put tracks on a vehicle is to reduce the pressure it exerts on the ground. A bulldozer might weigh 15x as much as light truck, but if it has 75x the contact area, it would have (much!) lower ground pressure, and would be dramatically less prone to sinking into snow or mud or what-have-you.
Some sanity checks:
1993 Toyota 4Runner / Hilux Surf: 25 psi (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ground_pressure)
Caterpillar D6R LGP Bulldozer: 5 psi (http://www.ritchiespecs.com/specification?type=Con&category=...)
Some tracked vehicles like bulldozers are available in extra-wide track versions to reduce their ground pressure even further. It wouldn't be surprising if most of the snow fleet is so equipped.
Re: How to Clear a Path Through 60 Feet of Snow, Japanese Style
#70Whenever british friends get frustrated about Heathrow turning into meltdown mode because of 5 mm of snow I enjoy posting them this: