# Two feet of snow forecast for Washington



## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 5, 2010)

Man, I don't envy those guys.  Not only is that one helluva lot of snow, it's all heavy and won't be easy to blow or plough.  The city is gonna come to a standstill until they clear that stuff.

The only saving grace is that it's right on the east coast so if there's warmer weather to follow, it probably won't cause much flooding.  If that much snow fell further inland and started melting quickly, it'd cause floods.


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## subzero (Feb 6, 2010)

If  that's the case, then everybody should ready their selves.. :hide:


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## mudmixer (Feb 6, 2010)

It is probably melting from the ground up even if it is snowing. The ground temps in DC are warm enough to melt and allow absorption into the soil, especially if it warm, wet snow. That amount will take a lot longer if it is the light fluffy stuff over previous snows.

Dick


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 6, 2010)

That's a good point about absorbtion into the ground, Mudmixer.  A lot of the snow melt just ends up making the ground wetter.

Still, Washington probably isn't well prepared for heavy snowfalls, so it'll probably take them a few days to dig out of this one.


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## oldognewtrick (Feb 6, 2010)

With all the hot air in that city I don't understand why the temperature would ever fall below 90*, ever.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 9, 2010)

oldog/newtrick said:


> With all the hot air in that city I don't understand why the temperature would ever fall below 90*, ever.



The hot air from the Capitol only heats the air above the Capitol.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 9, 2010)

And now there's another 12 inches of snow forecast.

Man, those guys are getting hit real hard this winter.  I just hope that people over there can stock up on the necessities.  Even if the roads aren't cleared, normally the priority will be on clearing the major arteries and bus routes so that if you can get to a bus stop, you can then normally get to a grocery store.  You don't realize how important baby food and diapers are until you're out of them.  Ditto for toilet paper.


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## TxBuilder (Feb 10, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> And now there's another 12 inches of snow forecast.
> 
> Man, those guys are getting hit real hard this winter.  I just hope that people over there can stock up on the necessities.  Even if the roads aren't cleared, normally the priority will be on clearing the major arteries and bus routes so that if you can get to a bus stop, you can then normally get to a grocery store.  You don't realize how important baby food and diapers are until you're out of them.  Ditto for toilet paper.



I've run out of all three in non emergency situations and it was miserable. I would imagine a total lack of access makes it substantially worse.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 10, 2010)

This pic is about an hour old


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 10, 2010)

Well, Wazzat, now you know exactly what we feel like after a good blizzard dumps a pile of snow on us.

If it makes you feel any better, I can try to get you recognized as an "honorary Canadian".


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 11, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> If it makes you feel any better, I can try to get you recognized as an "honorary Canadian".



Does skiing one time at Mont. Tremblant count?


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## TxBuilder (Feb 11, 2010)

What's it going to take for me to an "honorary Canadian"? Those pics are great.


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## Bud Cline (Feb 11, 2010)

Re: Washington DC area.

Bunch of friggin whiners!!!:hide:
I'm sick of hearing about it already.
The national news media didn't say anything when we got buried a few weeks ago. No one knew we were even here. Every road in the county had to be closed, snow drifts 10, and 12, and 15 feet deep. Railroads at a standstill. Snow plows unable to negotiate the roads. Law enforcement office-bound. Emergency equipment crippled. Power lines down, everything coated with ice.

Did you see us complainin"?

Jheeeezh!  What a bunch of cry babies.


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## TxBuilder (Feb 11, 2010)

Nebraska is more ready for it I guess. If we have a flurry and nothing sticks to the ground we shut down. We just can't do anything in it. Our entire state is helpless when there's ice on the ground. School is let out. Public offices are closed. People go home early.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 11, 2010)

Bud Cline said:


> Re: Washington DC area.
> 
> Bunch of friggin whiners!!!:hide:
> I'm sick of hearing about it already.
> ...


I tried getting down to pavement under my tires with 10 gals. of hot water applied to each.  Now the wheels are in the air and the car body is supported by snow.
Now I have to depend on

"The snow layers continue to compress and add weight and pressure to the layers below, which causes continuing relegation, and therefore movement."

with the weight of the car assisting in the melting/relegation.
Maybe I should make a video of this. . .


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## Bud Cline (Feb 11, 2010)

Hey It's a bitch for everybody - no denyin' that. But if you watch the national news broadcasts that's all they can talk about.  Must be nothing going on on Capitol Hill either.

The weather guys put on their mittens and go stand on a windy corner and bitch. They show cars in drifts and trucks jack-knifed and tow trucks parked and talk about school closings.  Big deal!  That's winter folks, live with it.  You don't see those people around Denver crying about it.


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## TxBuilder (Feb 11, 2010)

I don't know I am not in Denver. I am in Texas were we have unusually hot summers every year and at worst we freeze one day. Winter to me is Two weeks after the first. Otherwise it's just less warm than the rest of the year. For being the greatest state ever we sure don't get much in the way of seasons.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 11, 2010)

Bud Cline said:


> Hey It's a bitch for everybody - no denyin' that. But if you watch the national news broadcasts that's all they can talk about.  Must be nothing going on on Capitol Hill either.
> 
> The weather guys put on their mittens and go stand on a windy corner and bitch. They show cars in drifts and trucks jack-knifed and tow trucks parked and talk about school closings.  Big deal!  That's winter folks, live with it.  You don't see those people around Denver crying about it.


The weather guys/girls around here do stupid stuff, and they get very well paid to do it.
If it's not CO poisoning then they have no excuse.


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## Bud Cline (Feb 11, 2010)

I spent 13 years in Denton Texas and loved every minute of it.  Almost each winter along about the end of January the temperature would drop into the teens for about seven or eight days and there would be _one_ ice storm.  Ice would coat the roads as much as - oh hell - all the way up to 1/8" thick and it shut down everything. Eighteen wheelers off the roads in the ditches in mass.  Those guys travel all over, I never did understand why they would come to Texas and leave their brains at the state line.

Twelve hours later all was well and by the first week in February we were all getting ready to plant the gardens.

Even the hottest of the hot summers wasn't a big deal.  All of my work then was out of doors and we would be sitting on the job waiting for the sun to come up so we could at least work until noon or one o'clock before we went home for the day.  There were a few days we had to go home at eleven a.m. and the A/C felt really good.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 11, 2010)

"With its hot, humid summers and cool winters, the climate of Denton is characterized as humid subtropical. Dry winds reach the area in the summer and can bring temperatures to 100 °F (38 °C), although the average summer temperature is in the mid-90s. The coolest month is January with temperatures dropping down to an average minimum of 32 °F (0 °C).[18] Average snowfall in Denton is similar to the Dallas-Fort Worth average of 2.4 inches (6.1 cm) per year.[19] Denton lies on the bottom end of the Tornado Alley area. Although tornadoes rarely form, tornado watches are issued by the National Weather Service. Flash floods and severe thunderstorms are frequent occurrences during the months of spring.[20]

The city's all-time high temperature is 113 °F (45 °C), recorded in 1954, while the all-time recorded low is &#8722;3 °F (&#8722;19.4 °C). Denton receives approximately 37.7 inches (96 cm) of rain per year.[18]"


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 11, 2010)

I think the biggest difference between Colorado and the Washington DC area is preparedness.  It's not unusual to get a 5 or 6 foot snowfall in some places in Colorado, and so people are well prepared for that, and they have the necessary equipment to deal with large quantities of snow.  It's unusual to get even a foot of snow in Washington DC, and so they're just not prepared for the kind of hammering they're geting now (three feet of the stuff within a week).  They just don't normally need much in the way of snow clearing equipment there, and so they don't have the equipment to remove that snow quickly and efficiently.

Here in Winnipeg, they really don't have dedicated "snow plows", but they do have a hydraulic plow accessory and sanding accessory for every dump truck the City has.  So, if the weatherman is forcasting a heavy snowfall, then all those trucks get fitted with the plow attachments and they clear the main arteries in a co-ordinated manner, like this:







And, then a team of front end loaders will be working behind those trucks to clear the piles of snow they leave behind across intersections.






About the only place they actually collect the snow and remove it is in the down town core or places where a pile of snow on the intersection would make for a blind corner and people would end up in accidents cuz they couldn't see each other coming.  They do that with snow blower attachments on front end loaders.  They also have dump trucks co-ordinated to collect the snow and dump it on the banks of the Red River.  The snow blower will blow the snow into the truck bucket, and another truck will follow behind.  When the first truck is full, then the second one will move forward to take it's place, like this:






Otherwise, the snow just stays piled up at the intersections.  The pile shrinks over the course of the winter because of the weight of the snow.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 11, 2010)

"Jet Blowers (five) - This equipment uses a jet engine to remove accumulated snow from the roadbed and deposit it a distance from the tracks so that it cannot slide back. This piece of equipment is used primarily to keep the yards clear."

I've also heard of huge dumpsters with jet engines inside - you shovel in snow and feed it jet fuel and it outputs warm water.


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## Bud Cline (Feb 11, 2010)

Eight to nine inches of snow in Dallas right now, AMAZING.:

It'll all be gone by 4p.m. tomorrow probably.


Snow Blankets North Texas


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 11, 2010)

Wuzzat:

The car dealerships here use gasoline powered backpack leaf blowers to keep their cars free of snow.  I'm thinking that if you have a powerful leaf blower, you could maybe use that on a windy day to clear your driveway.  As long as you can get the snow into the air, the wind would carry it.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 11, 2010)

Nestor_Kelebay said:


> Wuzzat:
> 
> The car dealerships here use gasoline powered backpack leaf blowers to keep their cars free of snow.  I'm thinking that if you have a powerful leaf blower, you could maybe use that on a windy day to clear your driveway.  As long as you can get the snow into the air, the wind would carry it.


Probably useful at temps below freezing while the snow is still powdery.


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## mudmixer (Feb 11, 2010)

The north has a different type of snow. - Something about the crystal shape.

When I lived in northern Michigan (lower peninsula) the never bothered to think about plowing with 3" since the cars on the roads would blow it away in an hour or two, unless is was caused by a south or SW wind. When we had the wet snow, they would know it was coming and fitted the plows to the dump trucks, but they always had the narrow Bobcat or similar on tracks to do all the sidewalks.

Often people would leave their cars in the driveway instead of the garage and drive away and then have less snow to blow. You also kicked off the chunks in the shopping center or Walmart lot before you went home. - You just learn and adjust.

Dick


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 11, 2010)

What Mudmixer is saying about kicking off the big ice Stalagtites that form behind your car's tires is true.  You need to kick them off sometwhere other than your driveway.  Every winter I have tenants that come to me saying that their car is stuck in their parking spot and they can't get out.  When I go and look, I find that a big hunk of that stuff has fallen off right behind a tire, and it's been driven over so it's stuck to the ground and frozen in place.  They can't drive over it because the other tire just spins on the snow.

So, whenever I see those things in my parking lot, I toss them into the snowbank on the boulevard cuz it only takes a second to do that if they're still loose, but it takes a half hour to chop them up with an axe so the tenant can get out of their parking spot.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 12, 2010)

50 gals of 160F water shot into places that shovels can't touch will free a car supported by snow.  

The stone shield may be the most fragile part of your undercarriage.  Backing up in deep snow may overstress this part and cause it to take on shapes not envisioned by your car maker.


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## Nestor_Kelebay (Feb 12, 2010)

Yep, but when that water cools and freezes, you have a skating rink in your parking lot.  Then some tenant is going to slip and fall on the ice, and how am I gonna say I couldn't see that coming?

I just hack up the ice with an axe and scatter the chips so the car can drive over it.

Cars here don't really have anything to stop stones being thrown up by the tires.  I know you can buy them to put on your car, but it's generally only trucks that have mud flaps behind the rear-most tires.  It's rare to see a car with anything like that, although I suppose there's nothing to stop people from putting something like that on their cars.


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## Wuzzat? (Feb 12, 2010)

Forgot to say the air temp. has to be above freezing, although with ground temps rarely going below freezing here it may work with air temps slightly below freezing.


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## granite-girl (Feb 12, 2010)

Wow- That's a heck of a lot of snow!  It makes me not feel so bad for having our measly 4-6".  Sure is beautiful, but I'm sure you're all sick of it.


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## Bud Cline (Feb 12, 2010)

Here's one of our snow blowers.


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## granite-girl (Feb 12, 2010)

cool!.....


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## Bud Cline (Feb 12, 2010)

In this part of the country we are on the main line of the Santa Fe and Burlington Northern Railroads.  About 140 trains per day go through here east to west and west to east. Freight from New York and Los Angeles and coal from Wyoming.

This time of year there is also one other type of train in use:

Now that's a snow blower for sure!


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## Bud Cline (Feb 12, 2010)

...and it works like a champ!


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## granite-girl (Feb 13, 2010)

I think they could use some of your equipment out east...


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