flowerbug
Garden Master
*meandering about where i used to live*
for those who don't know what happens in the north country where snow is common and how the roads can be treated...
the main highways are tried to be kept clear. obviously there is a priority and wind or conditions may mean that side roads won't be clear for a day or two after a major snowfall or if the winds persist.
because of ice and temperatures using salt doesn't always go so well so they may add sand and grit to the mix to provide traction.
for the side roads people will drive on them enough that you will get compacted snow into ice with this grit embedded into it which is a good enough surface as long as you don't drive like a fiend. these layers of ice/grit can build up to a pretty thick covering on the road. you may not see the road again until spring.
at times if there are warming spells. if you are lucky the plows can scrape up the layer and get the road cleared down to pavement. most of the time you are not a high enough priority on a side road to warrant this joy so must cope with deep ruts of slush or channels in the ice and crud until the road crews bless you and scrape it away.
often the best thing was to live either on campus or near to campus so you could just walk because the time you spent digging out the car, warming it up and then driving you could have just been there already. i also lived a long ways away from campus for a few winter's and hated it, but all that walking was good exercise.
as for during the winter what they do with all the snow? they don't ever even attempt to clear the sidewalks in most neighborhoods. it's just not possible for most people to do it. they kept the main walks along the highway clear but even those were not the first priority when it snowed. so almost everyone has this habit of walking in the road (on the side roads). once in a while you will see dump trucks and snow plows and snow blowers collecting some of the snow and taking it away to be dumped. eventually they got the sidewalks done and then it was easier to walk on.
if you were like me. slated to take an early morning class at the uphill student developement complex (aka where the hockey rink, some classrooms, all the basketball courts, the pool, weight rooms, other activity rooms) you were likely to be slogging through snow that hadn't been cleared yet and since everyone was used to walking anyways the classes would go on no matter what. it was rare for school or classes to be called off because of weather. even the high winds of a blizzard blowing down the channel of the canal and whipping through the center of campus would not be enough to stop the show from going on. i'd been blown by gusts of winds off my feet a few times on icy patches. just the way it was. you did it because you could... and yep, i'm gone from there now, but it's nice to think back upon some times i'd had there...
i never really understood though, why they didn't have a tunnel system for between most of the buildings on campus (they do, but it is heat duct tunnels and not big enough for the general population to use)? there are a few buildings connected this ways, but the whole campus should have been done from the start or even if they could arrange a temporary setup to block the wind and snow during the worst of the winter... ah well, that's neither here or there...
for those who don't know what happens in the north country where snow is common and how the roads can be treated...
the main highways are tried to be kept clear. obviously there is a priority and wind or conditions may mean that side roads won't be clear for a day or two after a major snowfall or if the winds persist.
because of ice and temperatures using salt doesn't always go so well so they may add sand and grit to the mix to provide traction.
for the side roads people will drive on them enough that you will get compacted snow into ice with this grit embedded into it which is a good enough surface as long as you don't drive like a fiend. these layers of ice/grit can build up to a pretty thick covering on the road. you may not see the road again until spring.
at times if there are warming spells. if you are lucky the plows can scrape up the layer and get the road cleared down to pavement. most of the time you are not a high enough priority on a side road to warrant this joy so must cope with deep ruts of slush or channels in the ice and crud until the road crews bless you and scrape it away.
often the best thing was to live either on campus or near to campus so you could just walk because the time you spent digging out the car, warming it up and then driving you could have just been there already. i also lived a long ways away from campus for a few winter's and hated it, but all that walking was good exercise.
as for during the winter what they do with all the snow? they don't ever even attempt to clear the sidewalks in most neighborhoods. it's just not possible for most people to do it. they kept the main walks along the highway clear but even those were not the first priority when it snowed. so almost everyone has this habit of walking in the road (on the side roads). once in a while you will see dump trucks and snow plows and snow blowers collecting some of the snow and taking it away to be dumped. eventually they got the sidewalks done and then it was easier to walk on.
if you were like me. slated to take an early morning class at the uphill student developement complex (aka where the hockey rink, some classrooms, all the basketball courts, the pool, weight rooms, other activity rooms) you were likely to be slogging through snow that hadn't been cleared yet and since everyone was used to walking anyways the classes would go on no matter what. it was rare for school or classes to be called off because of weather. even the high winds of a blizzard blowing down the channel of the canal and whipping through the center of campus would not be enough to stop the show from going on. i'd been blown by gusts of winds off my feet a few times on icy patches. just the way it was. you did it because you could... and yep, i'm gone from there now, but it's nice to think back upon some times i'd had there...
i never really understood though, why they didn't have a tunnel system for between most of the buildings on campus (they do, but it is heat duct tunnels and not big enough for the general population to use)? there are a few buildings connected this ways, but the whole campus should have been done from the start or even if they could arrange a temporary setup to block the wind and snow during the worst of the winter... ah well, that's neither here or there...
