Is it possible to use a flamethrower instead of a shovel to clear your driveway?
xkcd explored this question. too fuel-inefficient to be practical. much better to use that same fuel to run a giant snowblower (and move the snow rather than melt it).
Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
251–260 of 346 posts
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
Article should be called Lessons you learn living in a place where it regularly snows but with terrible infrastructure and seemingly no societal preparedness for said regular snow
In other words most of the US outside of a major metro area. I’ve lived various places in Western Washington and the advice about generators and food and batteries and heat ring true everywhere more than an hour away from Seattle or Tacoma I would add that you should have a backup plan for preparing any holiday meal using a camping stove because the power could go out an hour into roasting a turkey. In fact don’t inv…
> I’ve lived various places in Western Washington and the advice about generators and food and batteries and heat ring true everywhere more than an hour away from Seattle or Tacoma
I live on the west side of puget sound, and get two nines of utility power. Undergrounding distribution lines is very expensive given the natural expenses of undergrounding and the shallow soil most of the region has. Undergrounding transmission lines is basically not happening outside of very special cases. Shallow soil also makes trees less stable, so that makes treefall -> utility outage more probable. Roads can get pretty nasty in winter storms too which also contributes to high time to repair.
People can say "bad infrastructure" all you want, but nobody wants to pay a lot more to fight geography for one more nine. Also at least in my community, every tree is sacred even though it's all third growth backfill from multiple clear cuts over the past who knows.
Article doesn't even mention cell towers go down in extended outages. Around me, it's about 4-6 hours, a little longer overnight, but only 30 minutes past when people wake up.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must live in Florida or be a terrible driver. The difference between winter and all seasons is very apparent.
It is. However the difference between winter and a modern all weather (it's a different class) isn't. And yes, we're probably terrible drivers. I do not live in Florida. 45N, continental winters. I'm never using winter tyres again unless society breaks down and no one shovels the roads anymore.
There are laws of physics you can’t hand waive away. Winter tires are really more cold temp tires. The rubber formulation is different to allow for grip in the cold and dry (tread pattern for cold and snow). As such a winter tire wears heavily driven in the summer, rubber formulation is just too soft.
For an all season that level of summer wear would be unacceptable. So a different formulation is used to improve summer wear at the cost of the winter low temp performance. You can’t have it both ways, a long wearing summer performance and good sub 40 degree grip.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#254> In the first really heavy winter storm of the year, your power might go off. This is understandable Having lived in Norway most of my 40+ years on this earth, I can with some confidence say that this is not an universal truth. I don’t think I’ve experienced any power interruption of over 1 hour in winter ever, and it’s been at least 5 years since the last time. Yes it snows here. A lot.
Also live in Norway, nord Trøndelag. Power went out 3 timeslast year, few times for days, but that was an unusual winter. This years it’s only gone out for a few hours. Seems to be a maintenance issue, trees are not cleared well enough. Sambo said that the warmer winters make the trees more likely to fall over.
ironically sometimes warmer winters are worse
like if a typical winter is slightly but consistently below 0C then a warmer winter would have
- more black ice
- more ice rain
- more snow melting and refreezing (so ice on roofs, ground or trees etc.)
- wetter snow (so heavier)
etc.
Through where I live it is/was the opposite this year. Normally we have mostly above 0C degrees and rarely ice rain/black ice or similar. Also some way colder days (-10C and below) too cold to have much ice issues. This year for ~a month the temperature did non stop bounce between enough above 0 during the day to slightly melt things (but not fully) and below 0 at evening + cold ground to fully freeze any water produced by melting. So non stop icy walkways, streets etc. for nearly a month. During the last days before it got warmer some unmaintained walk way I passed by had 4cm of solid ice on it. At the same time it wasn't cold enough to do ice skating on lakes. It really wasn't a nice winter.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#255Moved a year ago from California to northern Michigan. To add to this list, specifically regarding "Do NOT get wet and cold": o If you're walking out in the cold, have many different ways to keep your feet and your hands warm, because usually, you'll have a good-enough coat and winter-pants that'll keep your core relatively warm, but it's the very ends of your extremities that get cold (just got a small amount of fro…
Any recommendations about the boots? Or what to check for?
The key word you’re looking for is a "pac boot" depending on where you live you can get insulated, but honestly unless your live somewhere super cold and snowy, you probably don't need insulation. if you put on warm socks, keep snow out of them, are moving around, and aren't outside for hours on end you'll probably be fine even in really cold weather.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#256Frozen plumbing pipe lessons ought to be here.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#257> In the first really heavy winter storm of the year, your power might go off. This is understandable Having lived in Norway most of my 40+ years on this earth, I can with some confidence say that this is not an universal truth. I don’t think I’ve experienced any power interruption of over 1 hour in winter ever, and it’s been at least 5 years since the last time. Yes it snows here. A lot.
This article is a bit painful to read. It should be lessons from living in the remote wildnerness in winter. Pretty much all those problems are relative to rural infrastructure and poor home building. If you live in an area with heavy snow load you want an A-frame roof to de-load the roof (for example see: Tahoe, CA ~ 500-800" snow a year).
You'll even find ubiquitous A-frames in Southern California in mountain ranges. Crestline, Arrowhead, Big Bear, etc.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#258Interesting conversation I had with someone from a semi-warmer climate recently, as they visited: After seeing all the snow on the ground, they commented "wow it must snow all the time here". Me: "Well, we had that big winter storm, when was that, three weeks ago? I don't think its snowed much since then". You can see the gears turning as they come to the realization that snow doesn't, like, go anywhere. If it snows…
This is an interesting way to frame it, but then the obvious question is, for areas where it almost never gets above freezing, why doesn't the snow get infinitely thick? The other main ways you lose snow are: sublimation, wind blowing it elsewhere, compaction, and getting dirty (darker color helps it melt in the sun). All of these are relevant for other cities in the snow.
> but then the obvious question is, for areas where it almost never gets above freezing, why doesn't the snow get infinitely thick?
this is how glaciers are created
snow getting stuck up, not melting, compressing by weight into much much smaller ice and then more stacking up. And during the last ice age this repeating for a very long time (because snow is mostly air, so the amount of ice you get from it is very little).
The reasons why this isn't too big of an issue on the north/south pool, Antarctica etc. is because this places are also very dry/don't have a lot of snow fall.
To have snowfall you need water in the air. Which mostly comes from heat evaporating water. This doesn't happen in non stop freezing cold places.
So the wind needs to carry the wet air over.
But there is a gradient between hot wet air places and very cold places. So a lot of water rains or snows off before reaching the places where snow doesn't melt.
A large part of the south pool is technically a desert as it has hardly any _new_ snow fall. Just a lot of years old snow getting moved around by wind.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#259Earlier quoted context omitted.
Live in ex-urban MA and it’s not common but have had a couple of multi-day power outages in both winter and summer over the decades I’ve lived here. Don’t remember the details of the summer outage but the winter one was a massive ice storm.
Sure, but that's not the same as losing power during the first snowstorm every year. The massive ice storm was back in 2010 IIRC.
Oof, you just reminded me of the Ice Storm of '98.
I can still hear all the trees just exploding. It was wild.
Re: Lessons you will learn living in a snowy place
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
It is. However the difference between winter and a modern all weather (it's a different class) isn't. And yes, we're probably terrible drivers. I do not live in Florida. 45N, continental winters. I'm never using winter tyres again unless society breaks down and no one shovels the roads anymore.
There are laws of physics you can’t hand waive away. Winter tires are really more cold temp tires. The rubber formulation is different to allow for grip in the cold and dry (tread pattern for cold and snow). As such a winter tire wears heavily driven in the summer, rubber formulation is just too soft. For an all season that level of summer wear would be unacceptable. So a different formulation is used to improve summ…
Please read the studies in this thread.
Modern high quality all weather tyres are excellent in summer and winter.
Except on actual snow, where they're just ok, because of the hybrid sipe patterns, and ice, where they suck exactly as much as everything else except studded tyres (which suck on tarmac instead).