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You could always move back to Arkansas.
We’ve only had about three inches worth in my neighborhood so far this year, but it’s all still there as cold as it’s been. I’m hoping it will melt off my driveway on Monday.
Yeah but I don’t have miserably muggy summers, mosquitoes the size of Buicks, or chiggers up here!
We got a little bit of a heat wave and my driveway mostly melted off between yesterday and today. I just get it good enough that it won’t leave a bunch of ruts when I pull in. Last year, we were lazy about the driveway and there were a number of times I almost hit his truck pulling in. I decided I didn’t want to do that in the new bimmer.
It IS a tradeoff. Thomas Sowell was right.
Heated driveway and walkways. Sure, it can be expensive, but tell @kaladin you’re worth it.
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I’ve always wondered if it would be cost efficient for cities to install heated streets. They wouldn’t have to pay for snow plows and would probably reduce traffic accidents. My theory is Big Snow Plow wouldn’t allow this to happen.
Probably need an engineer to figure that up. @gldiii, do you know of any such studies? Would it depend on latitude or mean temperature?
Of course, in some places they don’t even bother getting snowplows now, so I doubt they would spend for the heated streets.
It looks as if there is at least one city that has done it.
This is like high school all over again. I haven’t done my homework on it but it looks like the smart guy in class did his so I’ll copy his answers. Once again it looks like the Dutch are ahead of us on this one. Rico engineers need to unite and solve this problem so I don’t have to white knuckle my commute to work on snowy days. Or build me a flying car. Get on the ball people.
Psst, Michigan, my friend. Holland, Michigan. My state is ahead of the curve.
I want to say that Klamath Falls, OR did this. It had hot springs nearby, and piped the water under the streets. I may be misremembering, though.
Ooops and congratulations. They’ve been doing this since 1988. And here I thought I had an original idea.
Winter is a little like Justin Bieber, Facebook informed me. Sort of cute there briefly in the beginning, but eventually it’s time for it to p**s off back to Canada.
I liked northern winters until I started to drive in places where salt was put on the roads. I still like them, but not when I’m out driving on road salt.
When I was a kid I thought I could make a small fortune shoveling driveways until the neighborhood curmudgeon set me straight: “Kid, the guy who put there will eventually get rid of it.”
Agh! Them again. They probably seeded the clouds.
I do recall in the early 80’s that sand replaced salt for a while because it was cheaper. I guess Big Salt got involved…or maybe it was clogged storm drains.
Salt’s hard on concrete.
So is the sub-tropical heat we get in the summer. That’s why we’re always working on the roads in Indiana. Sorry if you have to drive through during construction season.
This is what happened in 2009 when one of the back roads of Illinois melted all over my bicycle in 95F weather. It filled up the space between the front part of the fender and the tire, got in the rear sprocket, etc. I had to return home and spend a couple of days cleaning the tar off. The main state roads didn’t melt like that, but these were county or township roads in McLean County. Probably county roads; I’m not sure that townships have responsibility for any asphalt roads there, like they do where I live in Michigan.
When I was in high school, we lived in PG county outside DC. The beltway at that time was concrete. It got so hot that the expansion joints couldn’t take up all the expansion, and concrete blocks of paving would lift two feet in the air.
Good grief! It’s been a while, but some roads still bear heat scars where traffic caused slight indentations in the soft asphalt.
Dear Snow, I love you too. Your first appearance every year is simply enchanting, though I have to admit by May you’re getting on my nerves. Your cousin Ice, though is a b1tch, I don’t know why you always hang out with her.
I love snow when I’m standing on top of a mountain and wearing downhill skis. (And also wearing a hat, goggles, gloves, a good coat, and ski pants. No more skiing in shorts like when I was a crazy teenager.) I like snow pretty much all the rest of the time, except when I have to see people from the South driving in it.
Ice is a bit on the wild side, but can be exciting for a quick fling. But their other cousin, slush, is definitely not the sort you’d take home to meet your mother.
Thanks for a fun post, and comments.
You are aware that Arkansas has designated their mosquitoes as the State Bird?
http://www.dailyinterlake.com/local_news/20180104/county_plows_clear_downtown_bigfork
Those who have been up to visit my Apt, know it overlooks the Bigfork football field with a parking lot at the Western end. This is were the snow was dumped from clearing the little town of Bigfork. It is piled all the way up to the top of the fences. Took them until about 10 pm on Sat night to finish clearing the snow.
Yep! I grew up in rice country, which is the worst part of the state for them with all the standing water. Our mosquitoes are MEAN! I told Terry several times leading up to the first summer he spent in Arkansas that the mosquitoes would pack him off because he has delicious Northerner blood. He said “Ohhh, they won’t be a big deal. We have mosquitoes up in Montana!” He realized quickly that mosquitoes in Arkansas are on a whole new level.
My plan: