The Weirdly Complex Science of Snow Removal
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- čas přidán 20. 01. 2023
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If you think about it Half as Interesting is the first comment so your wrong.
When I moved to Cincinnati 10 years ago everybody was talking about millions of pounds of salt they got
It was great working with you!
I see
I wish you would have mentioned that time Philadelphia tried to dump snow in the Delaware River and created an ice dam. 😂
Fun fact: Reykjavik in Iceland has so much waste geothermal heat that after using it to generate their electricity and provide free hot water to most buildings they run hot water pipes under the streets and sidewalks to melt all of the snow.
They also heat one corner of the lake in the center of town so that the water fowl have somewhere to swim even in the middle of winter.
They also have a geothermal beach In Reykjavik so you can still swim at the beach.
Geothermal energy is underrated, it's a blessing if you have it
@@tnk.2033 yeah too bad it’s location based or we would have most of our energy problems solved
Oh my god that’s why that corner of the lake is always melted! I never knew it was intentional
Sounds like a nice place to live.
To be fair, snow removal in cities where it doesn’t snow at all is even more atrocious. Remember Texas?
Los Angeles would slide into sheer anarchy.
With the irony being that people from the north could probably drive perfectly fine in the amounts that shut down the south. (The main trick is just go slower, your tires can only exert so much force on the ground before breaking traction, winter lowers that amount so you just need to lower your speed as a result. Other things also matter like recognizing black ice and being able to recover/control a slide.)
@@Wraithfighter Sooo...nothing changes?
Although lack of regulation and safety measures can also partially be blamed for that one.
@@jasonreed7522 Lack of exposure to conditions often results in failure to maneuver in those conditions. It happens after the first snow of the year everywhere. People at higher latitudes just get more practice.
You completely overlooked how its done in cities where snow is just a regular occurrence like Montreal, capital of snow removal and snow planning. The logistics behind are insane and super interesting
Ya... NYC is not the snowiest city.
Yea. This guy assumes everywhere is like new york.
My town is amazing at snow removial. I live in a small village and our backroads are amazing because of snow removial.
Cool; I'll see if I can find a video about it! In Toronto we pretty much just plow, leave giant dirty snowbanks, and then dump tons of salt all over the place cause we don't care about our cars, shoes, dogs, grass etc.
@Sequoia if you want to see montreal videos use the french word for snow removal "deneigement"
@@Sequoia204 There's a whole subgenre of CZcams videos of Montreal snow removal.
"Much like British food, snow removal can be
significantly aided by adding lots of salt"
Good one 😂😂
Says more about American food and tastes really...
@@nbartlett6538 I think your food will taste better if you add this salty comnent during cooking.
@@peterirvin7121you got him there
As someone who actively works in snow removal, most places are actually just bad at it. There’s very little good training in the industry, most city/state guys are just out through a video series and told her after it. Not to mention turn over is super high. It’s kind of just a mess and even the best towns/companies still end up scrambling a bunch
We could also improve the plows, I think. Dumping berms across driveways is a pain for homeowners, can cause injuries and property damage, and can tap people in or out of their driveways.
And there I was at the start of the video going "actually I've always thought Spokane did a really good job and I've never had problems with it"
There are also cities that deliberately do it the wrong way so they can keep tons of city employees happily on the payroll.
I'm looking at you, Chicago.
@@CaptNSquared I thought it sounded like a fun job when WSDOT was in need of drivers for I-90 a couple years ago. But I would have needed a CDL and then I found out it paid $20/hr. No thanks.
@@paulsmith5611 ..... Maybe on the west coast 20/hr is not much but in the heartland you would have people lined up with shovels for 20/hr. Of course I live just far enough south that we get maybe one or two good (read: 2 or 3 ins) snows most yrs. More or less.
20 seconds in and we've been through 5 different stock clips of actors showing basic emotions. Probably a new record
Don't give him any ideas...
@@wilk746 Might be too late
"I paid for the whole stock footage library, so I'm gonna use the whole stock footage library"
Editors are on crack this video
Yet not one brick. A little disappointing
Salt brine is becoming a big thing up here in (western) Canada, since it's more cost efficient and lasts longer so it can be applied earlier in advance of a storm. It's essentially just a mix of salt and water sprayed on the road by a truck before a storm and it massively helps stop the accumulation of snow. And in reference to your beet juice comment - adding it to this brine helps it work at lower temperatures. Pretty cool
Salt brine is used everywhere and has been for a while
The body shops love it as well. 7x more corrosive to auto paint than salt. You never see old cars in areas that use it now, they all rusted out
Ya here in nodak we use bring till about 5 degrees or somewhere close but we also mix or salt in with sand so we don’t waste as much
Beet juice also reduces the corrosive properties of salt brine.
@@ExploreWithIsaac Dwight would be proud
I have been balls deep in snow removal in Ontario Canada for 13 years and I’m here to tell you, the amount of machinery, human beings and money being thrown at the various ways to remove snow is absolutely crazy. Just the side walks alone in my city, 40 beats, 12 hours to clean one beat at 120 an hour per machine.
You forgot the other big element! Gravel! Graveling the roads is used a lot up here in Canada where it's cold enough for salt not to work. Freeze some pebbles in with that refreezed snow. And BAM you have a little bit of traction! Less corrosion, and only need a new windshield on your car every other year 😂
Added benefit of not turning the roads into a big salt lick for the wildlife. Decreases the likelihood hitting a moose
Was there a touch of broken glass theory here?
*every year (or leave the damaged windshield up for like 5 years)(Albertan)
Winnipeg?
Same here in the alps, with the difference I've never seen or had a damaged windshield due to it! Very common.
I live pretty rurally in the Black Forest, Germany, in a 70 people village at 600m altitude.
Over here, the community pays the dairy farmers - who wake up early anyway - to just plow everything with their tractors. Works like a charm.
Rural America pretty much does the same thing. The small towns have at least one machine that does the roads. Most residents pay a farmer to clear their driveway for them if they aren't capable of doing it themselves. The county is responsible for the roads leading into town which suck most of the time because, as the video says, they're clearing major roads first. Some roads only get plowed because a farmer had to drive somewhere so they clear a bit as they go.
yeah round here our taxes go to the city and farmers apply for a portion of the budget because they have the equipment where the sitty doesn't wanna buy maintain and store such equipment sometimes big city has to drive out to help but mostly the farmers care for us not only with food but transportation mechanical work medical care ... thank God for Farmers, we really don't pay em enough
Same thing on the other side of the Rhine in the Vosges. Except our local farmer always destroys our property in various different ways because we're at the end of a one-way road and the snow has to go somewhere...
I've been working on a dairy farm close to Bad Urach and I've been plowing snow for a 80 people village at 5am. And you are right. It works like a charm :)
Our town had its own snowplow before it broke down and was never replaced. Then some idiot from a neighboring town took over and he just through salt on it...why bother with plowing when salt does the job.
Where we could do it on our own they left a road for the kids in less snow Conditions and with massive snow only the main road and Roady with incline were cleared, the other roads got just the top layer removed...but with the new guy that was just salty snow.
I lived in Chicago a few years back, and I have family who live in the Buffalo-Rochester area. Both places do an excellent job of snow removal, so I didn’t know people complaining about it was a thing. Even where I grew up in rural southern Michigan, it would take 6+ inches before school would close (caveat: it’s flatter than a pancake there). We were more likely to close for the temperature due to the risk of exposure for children waiting for the bus
Well, Buffalo has a lake and a river alongside it, so we haven't a problem with where to put the snow
Iron range in northern Minnesota. School pretty much never closed due to snow. It had to be -40°F without windchill before schools would close. If there was too much snow, many people would just ride snowmobiles or walk to school. Was funny in high school to see all the snowmobiles in the parking lot where vehicles normally parked.
I also work on snow removal with plow trucks at the hospital I work at. It’s definitely not easy and it takes a long time (and that’s just a small campus.) I think city plowers shouldn’t be looked at as annoying, but as people who have been on-call and awake for hours trying to make sure you can get to work/school. Not to mention it could be a bit risky driving those huge plows. In my opinion we should be more grateful for what they do instead of complaining about their work.
THIS!!
Here in Hokkaido they don't plow all the way down to the pavement, they just shave off the top layer and compress the snow down on top of the road. It's slippery as hell to walk on but really easy to drive on- barely any black ice & no salting required. In the Hokuriku part of Japan they actually have sprinkler systems running through the center of every main road that shoot out 13~20c water to melt the snow and keep the road temperature just above freezing point so that ice doesn't form. It's a brilliant system that runs entirely on sensors and requires very little human-intervention. It uses water, sure, but in return uses no gas and very little electricity.
Here in sweden we do a similar thing but we add sand and gravel to make the road less slippery.
Sapporo is the city with highest snow fall in the world! Definitely would like to visit during a winter.
that sounds... significantly cheaper to implement than the salt-snowplow thing we have going in the usa. probably still more expensive than my hometown's solution of never having snowfall in the first place though
There are some trials going on about using spray salted water instead of solid salt or brine. So far, much better and much cheaper.
@@aluminiumsandworm Hokkaido has 90,000 kilometers of roads, while the United States has over 6,700,000 kilometers of roads. Even if only a quarter of those roads got snow, that's still over 20 times the amount of roads to cover, not to mention somehow spanning water over even longer distances since the US covers even farther.
Hokkaido has amazing snow systems, but it would likely take centuries for the costs to offset
I feel like this should have been a full Wendover video "the logistics of snow removal"
Sounds good.
But then they miss out on an innuendo, and we can’t have that here
Railroads even use jets, so there's the plane tie in too
HAI and Wendover should do a collab sometime. Both these guys seem like they could get along.
That would be plagiarism, Sam from Wendover doesn't like Sam from HAI, it's a long running feud.
Halfasintresting: "Salt is running out."
Ocean: "Hold my drink."
Honestly, NYC does a great job. I remember in the COVID winter in 2020-21 there was a big blizzard, and they were out on the streets within minutes (and had been pre-preparing the roads to begin with) clearing it. The road was completely normal in the morning, all of this during a huge COVID surge. It was much appreciated during such difficult times.
All of NY state has decent to good removal service. Ironically Pa does not at least in the philly area it's main streets get plowed but if you're on a side street better have someone who does private snow removal or your street will be missed.
Snow removal here in Montreal is truly impressive. Snow blowers working 24/7 and constant lineups of semi-trucks getting filled with snow one after another.
yup I livve on a shitty street and its like looking pretty nice right now bro
didn't Toronto once call in the army to clear snow?
And somehow being able to do it without banning street parking... My stupid city bans street parking during the winter so that snow plowing can occur, even when it doesn't snow
Montreal is the best in the world at snow removal. No doubt about it.
Ship it to Europe skiing resorts,they need it 😁
4:30 I lived in Chicago for a year, and often reflected how stupid it was that, if I didn't clear the snow on the sidewalk in front of my house, and someone fell, I was not responsible, but if I DID clear the snow, and someone fell, they could sue me. In the intervening 20 years, it still doesn't make sense.
In Berlin, where I lived for about 24 years of my love the snow plowing actually worked pretty well. They started at about 2 or 3 in the morning and it was always possible to at least walk on the sideway.
Sometimes the streets where slippery though.
Now I live in another city in Germany In which they start plowing at 9 or 10 in the morning which makes the streets and sideways nearly unusable for half the day.
I plow snow for a living and most of this video is accurate. I am assigned a route on the highway and unless told otherwise I stick to that route. It is true that we go through an insane amount of salt, especially for a prolonged storm or if it’s an ice/sleet storm. I always like to reiterate to people on the roads though how important it is to give ample room to snow removal equipment operating on the roadways. There are lots of blind spots, we stop often and on top of trying to watch the mirrors we are keeping an eye on the equipment too to make sure everything is running.
if you work in the industry then would you explain to me why 9 times out of 10 i see plows spreading salt but not actually plowing even when the roads get really bad? i cant think of a reason for it though im sure there is one for it.
Hey what do you guys when you are plowing a road during white out conditions? Do you pull over and wait or do you just plow through it?
Best part is when they have a salter truck followed by plow trucks pushing the salt off the road. I would bet massive money we could drop state/. Municipal salt usage by 50% and have zero loss of road quality. So wasteful
@@borderlandsforlife7068 We are told if it’s about an inch of snow don’t drop your plow. The less snow tears up the plow over time, the deeper snow cushions the plow, so a lot of times we just salt and not plow.
@@AK74Man87 im not talking about 1 inch im talking about 3 plus inches
I’m often impressed at how a country as large and as car-centric as America is able to plow so much snow. I’ve lived places like Switzerland where they’re amazing at it, but they don’t have anywhere near the same scale.
i mean thats why its so plowed cuz we rely pn cars so much places with less car use have less need to plow
@@gamagama69 makes sense when you think about it!
Also in Switzerland the roads don't have to be completely free of snow. They can gladly have a layer of snow on them with no problem. Most people have (because they should) winter tires for driving on snow and especially in the mountainous regions people have snow-chains to put around the wheels so you can just drive on snowy roads.
(But then again I think about Zurich a couple years ago which decomissioned a lot of their snow cleaning machinery and had huge problems when all of a sudden there were bigger amounts of snow)
It's mainly the cities, interstates and federal highways that get plowed. And even that is in question. Cities in the South have almost no infrastructure for snow removal, and even interstates will be closed if the snow is bad enough. By land area most of the country is very rural, so it is up to private citizens to plow rural roads; and the county government might help if you are lucky. In cities, it's a combination of of city, county and state governments paying for it, and also private snow removal businesses, and lastly just normal people helping out with sidewalks and driveways.
I live in Canada and worked in the snow removal industry for years. I can confirm that it's a constant loop of take a first pass, go back over what you did, shovel smaller areas, hand salt smaller areas, then repeat if the storm is still going. I once had a snow removal shift that was 28 hours long.
That seems like a dangerous amount of time to be awake and still operating machinery.
@@dovebair Honestly, yes, it was. We were mostly working with shovels and stuff, but we were still driving between sites. That 28 hours was my best friend and me. In our last hour the rest of the company came in and took over. We went home and I felt like garbage from exhaustion.
Watching this during my 12 hours shift for a state DOT. I was nervous to watch this but you pretty much nailed everything except the fact that most state, County, and local municipalities are gravely understaffed so most drivers are covering multiple routes. I currently have 3 but I know come or let’s that have as many as 5.
In a place where it doesn't snow at all, unexpected snowfall would be really difficult to deal with and they would, at that point, be really bad at doing it.
Oh, you mean Texas?
@@kalebbruwer the power is probably out too because Texas refuses to winterize its power grid and is separate from the national grid
That reminds me of when the Irish economy nearly collapsed during a snowstorm in 2017
@@HeHeHaHa146 I heard somewhere that they are making improvements with winterizing, probably since last time was so embarrassing
Like when DC shut down in 2009 because there was a half inch of snow?
In Montreal, especially in the dense downtown and old Montreal have teams that use giant snowblowers to fill up semi trucks and haul the snow out of the city as there is no room to remove to snow other then the sidewalks or street parking
Mighty machines intensifies
The problem is that it requires something like an order of magnitude more manpower and equipment to clear a fraction of the amount of road. It's a tolerable cost in a small area where it is hugely beneficial to the local economy but the costs involved make it prohibitive in, say, a suburban residential community
Instead in Minneapolis, we'll just restrict parking from one side of the street if we get too much snow and the snow plow's piles between the sidewalk and road get too big
Mezzaine. I was wondering if someone was going to comment. It's all about the infrastructure
The funny thing about Montreal is that each of our 19 boroughs manages its snow removal independently, and you can see big differences between them when you go around the city after a storm, or even just by checking InfoNeige.
Here down wind of the Great Lakes we're in one of the snowiest places in the US. The state departments of transportation and the local highway departments do a great job of snow removal. Storms that dump feet snow and would paralyze most most places are cleaned up as a matter of course. They deserve a lot of appreciation.
I grew up in Potsdam and live in Burlington. Always had fantastic snow removal. Prepare and respect the conditions and everything goes well!
I live in Colorado, and these things are our best friends in the winter. The best is getting "stuck" behind them on the highway. So what I'm going 35, the road is clear, and I'm not gonna die. Also hearing CZcamsrs talk about places in my state that I frequent is always fun. Headed roads in Vail is the absolute best
I love reading people from Denver bitching about how bad their snow removal is, and those same people talk shit about Douglas County relentlessly. Well, they must be jealous because our roads and streets are plowed down to pavement within hours, not days (or not plowed at all like Denver's residential streets). Unless you live on a cul-de-sac, you aren't complaining about DougCo's snow removal.
honestly, I live in the twin cities, and I'm always impressed by how fast and effectively the major roads are cleared. minor roads always suck, but they do a far better job than any of us regular folk trying to clear our driveways and sidewalks
Came here to say this. Minneapolis/St. Paul have a great snow removal ability and system in my opinion!
I live up in the northern US with you guys and I have to say, I have never thought snow removal was bad up here. Never had any issues except some extremely minor side roads being a bit of a challenge, but you usually only deal with that leaving and coming back cuz you live on one. Weird to see its not as effective in other places.
mndot is very good at snow removal. Smaller departments (counties, cities, townships) just dont have the money to spend like mndot does. The trick when buying a house is to buy one on a rural state highway, you will have the traffic of a county road and a very high level of service when it comes to clearing the road of snow and ice
That’s the past I don’t understand. Places like the twin cities are amazing at snow removal, but then in Ann Arbor, MI they’re terrible at it. We have the exact same plow trucks but they just put one tiny blade in between the axles of the truck instead of the big one on the front. They literally just pack the snow down and turn it into mush a bit faster instead of pushing it off to the side. We need someone to do a full hour long video on places that do it right, those that don’t, and what the problems are. Is it just funding? Education? Something else? I demand an investigation.
Agreed! I just moved here from Colorado and they do a much better job here!
Living in Canada, we think the snow removal is often shit, until we see on the news or online that an inch of snow falls somewhere in the US and it is complete armageddon, and we remember just how amazing our snow removal crew are to deal with a couple feet of snow sometimes and keep our cities moving. Like even in the worst of storms some rural highways are completely clear.
The US is very diverse when it comes to winter preparedness and snow removal, if you live in any of the northern or mountain states it is an exact science, in Texas or Georgia? Not so much.
About ten years ago, Atlanta got 3/4 inch (2 cm) of snow and the city was paralyzed for almost three days.
@@teebob21 if we got 2cm of snow it wouldn’t even be removed from 90% of roads. We would be expected to just live with it.
Currently live in 'the US' and have 100-300 inches of snow currently. The south and southwestern US dont get snow and shutdown when it happens. The rest of the US understands what winter is.
@@ethancrisp3491 300 inches, eh?
I live somewhere where it does snow and my town actually is really good about snow removal, major thoroughfares are usually cleared on the day it snowed and the next day most other places have usually been cleared.
I work on a DOT bridge construction crew, and being state employees, we have to plow snow. I can definitely say, most crews just suck at removing snow. My crew only cover a few counties, but we do an excellent job. You can see the difference when you cross the county lines.
I grew up in Chicago. We could get over a foot overnight and it was still 50/50 we’d get a snow day. Never realized other places had such a challenge clearing snow until I went to college.
We never got snow days unless
1. The snow knocked out power lines
2. Ice was covering the roads
3. So cold the school buses won't start
@@appa609 used to be like that here in Indiana where I grew up in my school years. remember 1994 -36F with -60F wind chill and we still had to go wait on a bus outside and go to school. now however its canceled for about anything anymore, no wonder kids are weak.
@Dratchev241, Yeah, pre-2020 snow days were NOT a thing here. Now? Pfffffft we've had 3 or 4 and it's not even the end of January.
@@katie7748 here it was early 2000s when they started having no school days for silly shit.
Helsinki uses gravel instead of salt, to provide grip for tires instead of trying to melt/remove infinite amounts of snow
We do that in Canada too, but it really damages the paint in cars 😢
We do that in Canada too, but it really damages the paint in cars 😢
sand/salt mix works better then strait rock salt. even course grit sand does the job
Take notes from Finland. Gravel. It doesn't remove ice but makes sure you have traction. Added bonus is that in the spring most of can be swept up and reused next year.
I live in Ontario a bit outside Toronto and I am almost always genuinely impressed at how well the snow removal goes. The roads are usually fine mere hours after the snow lets up. All the rust on the bottom of my car isn't a fan, but I'd rather have my car rust out slowly over the years than get totaled in a crash.
I'm a snowcat operator and I can confirm that snow is exceptionally complicated to work with. A slight difference in how the storm is blowing can make the conditions completely different in less then an hour.
Yeah, drifts can really pile up. I've been a snow/ice dump truck driver for a few years now and I never would have guessed what a pain in the ass it can be.
The biggest problem I have with snow removal is all of the idiots in cars who get out on the road during and immediately after who are still playing on their phones while driving just like it was clean and dry dry out.
Then they get jammed up because they or some other jacknape was trying to go way too fast on the surface and ended up in a snow bank.
Then there's the people with four-wheel-drive who think that hey I can go really fast and forget the four-wheel drive does not equal four-wheel stop. As well as turning at high speed with limited traction. Next are the one's who insist on backing or pulling onto busy roadways with limited vision, or pulling out half way and then stopping leaving you the choice to hit them or smash the car on your left who hasn't figured out that passing means getting past the vehicle in the right lane. On the topic of passing, you can't do it effectively while tailgating the vehicle you are trying to pass. I'm certainly not going to go faster because some idiot never learned to drive correctly.
All of these become road hazards to straight simple plowing.
@modest mouse colored person i mean i guess that depends on what you are doing with the snow. Plowing it into big piles out of the way easy. But snowcats tend to be used in more complicated jobs or conditions unacessable by a wheeled vehicle
@modest mouse colored person alright, so your entire city is snow free every minute of snow during a storm right?
I mean of course, the logistics is so simple you did it yourself
@modest mouse colored person yep that's it
No insurance, no liability, no company policy, no payment
Get out and push, simple
Couple of points relating to this subject.
In 1959, Edinburgh installed an 'Electric blanket' under the road surface of the mound (A steep hill just below the Castle). Now turned off but was successful back in the day.
All the Scottish snowploughs/gritters can be tracked (Got their own website) and the are individually named.
Names have included :-
Gritter Thunberg
Gritty Gritty Bang Bang
Plougher O'Scotland
Sled Zeppelin
Gritney Spears
Creedence Clear-Road Survival
and many more.
Reminds me of the Tom Scott questionnaire about naming an owl
a lot of cities have had snow plow naming contests actually! its a fun little bit of civic engagement, especially when my city only took entries from elementary and middle schoolers 😄
10/10 snow removal in Australia.
Same in Florida
Even better in Dubai.
9/10, bits of OZ can see snow year round let alone in winter.
Even better in Singapore
Here in Wisconsin we use a truly Wisconsin solution on the roads, especially on bridges and underpasses, cheese brine. The trucks go out before the storm to spray the parts of the road that are most likely to freeze first or to cause ice hazards. The white spray lines are pretty easy to spot on the road before the snowfall. Then when the snow starts, the plows work on the main and emergency routes and work their way out to residential streets depending on how much snow has fallen and how the weather is predicted for the day after the storm. Right now, outside my house, since we only got just under an inch yesterday, my residential street was not plowed but had sand distributed on it. I still have to shovel my own section of sidewalk.
cheese plants have to pay to dispose of the cheese brine anyway. only took somebody ages to figure out hey let's take a byproduct off their hands for free and put it to use
As a snow removal company owner in the private sector I really appreciate the accuracy that went into this video.
I feel like it's all a matter of perspective. Here in Cleveland, a lot of people gripe about their city's inability to plow snow, but that hasn't been my experience at all. Highways and large thoroughfares are plowed _immediately_ when snow falls, often meaning they never become impassible. Salt is usually laid out in advance. Even when snowdrifts get big, even in the middle of the night, even when it's 5 below zero, you still see hundreds of plows out there. And while not every street is plowed promptly, they do all eventually get plowed. I find it remarkable.
I guess some people will just complain about any solution that falls short of perfection.
I think a lot of the complaints come because businesses refuse to close and employees have consequences for not making it in. If cities would make it so businesses had to shut down during inclement weather and people could stay home, complaints would decrease dramatically.
I feel like an issue is the interstate will get plowed immediately but nobody can get there because their neighborhood is iced in. Last year the plows never made it to us and everything froze. So many people could not drive out and none of the sidewalks or bike lanes get plowed either so there aren't really any options.
@@ethancrisp3491 You can shovel your own driveway and sidewalk or pay a plow (they aren't that expensive). If the street never gets plowed though, that is a problem. The plows should get out there eventually. That said, you do have to acknowledge the challenge in putting over 1,000 plows on the road and keeping them there for days straight. I don't know what went wrong in that case, but you can imagine a lot of things that could go wrong.
@@ethancrisp3491 My guess is they keep the interstates open so us truck drivers can still get our loads delivered.
I get that this is very general and US centric. But we don't have problems in northern Sweden and here snowplows clear roads at up to 80km/h (and they get all the snow in one pass, for a dual lane highway they run two plows next to each other). Though we have snow for ~160 days of the year.
Welcome to norrbotten if you want to study how to handle snow :)
Our small village of 1700 people has 3 snow plows + our gator with a plow + the little ride on snow blower thing. We only get ~28 inches of snow a year. We never have a problem in village limits. The county on the other hand...
I'm really appreciating the high volume of Minneapolis stock footage in this video
While watching this I kept thinking to myself, "hey There we are...hey there we are again!"
An episode on snowplows, and not a single mention of Plowy McPlowFace. That’s a real thing BTW. Minnesota started naming their plows.
Anchorage has a truck named Darth Blader.
Watching all these clips of people trying to go about their days in a snowstorm reminded me how fucking glad I am that I moved to Florida
True story - it's only in the last year or so that I've learned that Homer Simpson calling his business "Mr Plow" was NOT a joke about Homer being borderline illiterate, and that it's simply how Plough is written in the US (which is itself quite funny as it looks like it should rhyme with Low)
Can you do a larger video about this on Wendover? There is so much more to snow plowing than said in the video. And again, very US-centric. For example, in Austria or Switzerland, there are meters of snow, cleared by giant snowblowers. The Großglockner Hochalpenstraße gets cleared like that every spring. (in german: czcams.com/video/K79jwuMTmag/video.html)
Snow removal is actually pretty top-notch in the Twin Cities. If it snows overnight, the freeways are usually pretty good in the morning
Growing up rural just south of St. Cloud we’d always say “as long as we can make it to the freeway we’ll be ok!”
@@lifevest1 Yeah but it always seems to get bad around Monticello lol
Even during a snowfall they try to always keep one lane plowed on the freeways. It's great!
After record breaking snowfall about a decade ago, Connecticut borrowed a bunch of snow melters called "Snow Dragons" and dumped it in the rivers. Usually, putting snow from roads into rivers is illegal here, but we made an exception because the alternative was to leave the snow piled up in the center lane higher than the buildings in some places until it melts naturally.
In some parts of Europe, plows don't remove snow all the way down to the asphalt, so a compacted layer of snow forms on the road and in many places stays there all winter. All vehicles are then legally required to fit snow chains or studded tyres (similar high friction tyres may be permitted) depending on if it's a small region that gets snow like in Italy or most of the nation like in Finland.
We are super efficient on this in Finland. All sidewalks and roads are cleared within a few hours even after a big snow storm. Studded tires are just a no brainer. Just the other night I was cycling through our 40,000 people town after 6 inches of snow just fell. Snow tractors and trucks were EVERYWHERE. Almost all sidewalks were cleared. It just works. I could just cycle on the compacted snow like it was summer on summer tires no problem.
One region clears snow and bans studded tyres, while another compacts snow and requires studded tyres, and you need to commute between them often.
@@piuthemagicman how expensive are studded tires
Studded tyres or chains are not required in Finland. Winter tyres are, if the road conditions require it from november 1st to the end of march
In Austria we do a simular thing. At first, we try to get the main streets clear, but its ok, if there is a hard snowy underground, after that we do the same with the other streets. The diffrent between us and finnland is, it is a lot warmer, so after the big snow is over, we try to get the main streets black again, befor the snow gets ice or mud. But the other roads often are white all the winter. It works fine and the streets didnt get damaged by the salt or ice
Well, if it doesn't snow where you live, your town probably sucks at snow removal since they've never had to. Like that one time there was a light dusting of snow in Atlanta and the city pretty much shut down.
I remember Snowmegeddon 2010 in the CSRA, rolling around Augusta looking for lunch in my CA-plated car being one of the few people who carried snow chains (they're needed on occasion in certain mountain passes). I think I ended up at a Waffle House 🧇
I am in neither of the two groups mentioned at the beginning... because Finland (same as for example Canada) knows how to deal with this. An interesting approach is, that a lot of construction vehicles (which in summer do, well, construction work.. but in winter less so), are available for snow work. So a lot of those push-something-ahead-of-you (not the tracked ones) are snow-plows and spreading sand/gravel, and lorries are also snow-plows or used to transport snow out of the cities. And there's a lot to transport, yes. Outside the cities there's mountains of snow which will still be there in early summer...
In the upper midwest they run 3+ wide snow plow "trains" down the highways at MUCH faster than 35mph. The lead on the left runs a V-plow, and the followers on his right will have flat plows to keep pushing to the right shoulder.
I have been a Coloradan for almost 16 years now, and I can say that the overnight freezing is what really causes problems. (At least down in the foothills.)
That fancy sports car might be nice in the summer, but try driving that on the Diagonal section of Highway 119 after a snowstorm - (don't do that, I am not liable for any injuries sustained while attempting such actions)
A tip for for anyone that has ice on their driveway or sidewalk:
-Get a hammer, lighter ones tend to be better. (For thicker ice you may need a larger hammer, I've had the lighter ones work for ice about an inch thick)
-bring the head a couple inches above the ice, and start tapping the ice
(I've found that tapping in a different spot each time cracks it quicker -- Also tapping in lines should create stress points for the ice to break.)
-Once you have a bunch of smaller chunks, use that snow shovel and move it off the sidewalk or driveway!!
This method may not be as effective if you have a large driveway, since you are breaking the ice one chunk at a time --- If you have any other methods that don't use salt let me know in the comments please!!
I just moved from Colorado to Minnesota after growing up in Denver. What was nice in CO was that snow would melt pretty quickly with the fluctuating temperatures but you're right! Sometimes it would ice over instead. Breaking it up is great advice!
Minnesota is great but I do miss that Colorado sun!
Our city blows their snow clearing budget every November, we live in a city that always has snow until March / April. That is a different issue entirely but shows even the bean counters can’t clear snow efficiently.
if they dont blow it, then the bean counters say well you obviously didnt need that amount. this year you get a quarter of last year's budget
I was a snowplow driver for CDOT. CDOT is the agency that manages Vail Pass and all other vital roads in the state of Colorado.
Vital roads near populated areas are to be kept clear 24/7. Rural areas don’t have this rule and can suspend operations overnight.
We had a two snowflake rule. One flake was okay, if we saw two we had to report it to dispatch and call in somebody on our patrol.
Interesting thing about magnesium chloride is that it stops melting ice at about -15 Fahrenheit. But that doesn’t mean it is no longer useful. On days where the temperature stays in the negative teens CDOT will run two plows at a time to sand the roadway. The first plow drops magnesium chloride and the second drops salt sand mix on the freezing liquid salt. It gives the icy blacktop the texture of sandpaper. I learned to do this on US 285 westbound descending into the town of Bailey.
The bottom 4 miles of my patrol had guard rails. Plowing that section was like driving by braille. I would put the blade on the guard rail and it would steer the snowplow. There was often a 30 foot drop on the other side of the rail. Needless to say it took some getting used to.
In Canada, we also put in sand with our salts when it comes to snow removal. While it won't melt the ice, it does make for a surface with higher traction and cars disperse it naturally as the tires pick them up and put them down elsewhere. The downside is that it eventually made our streets that haven't been plowed look like WW1's No Man's Land in time.
They do that here in some places in the US and I hate it during the spring because he does make everything look like a Third World war zone. It’s very messy and this is why they stopped using it in most places. But the places that still do you can tell the difference very much cars have gotten a lot more modern nowadays anyway and with good tire technology and all wheel drive miniseries have discovered that it doesn’t really make a difference.
@@IRLSuperb I find it kinda effective over here since the weather can drop below the freezing point of salt water so using salt alone would just refreeze in due time if snow removal for an area isn't a major priority (say, residential streets). But yeah dealing with brown slush and sand that gets into your boots isn't too fun.
@@IRLSuperb AWD, 4 Wheel drive is utterly useless when there isnt any traction. AWD is going to slide over clear ice just as badly as fwd/rwd. as for the sand making a mess - would you rather messy or the alternate of more aggressive salts, which btw is corrosive. more salt = more infrastructure being destroyed , more environmental impact and lastly your beloved AWD suv/crossover whatever turning into a pile of rust before you finish paying it off
Snow removal generally works really well here in Finland and I believe in other Nordics as well. So it doesn't suck everywhere...
Amazing. How did you get so good at it?
@@thePronto They can't wait until they're Finnish.
Yeah, i can confirm.
Works great in Sweden as well. This video is very US-centric. Surprise surprise, snow removal is just one of the 1 million things that does not work in the US lol
Probably same in Norway, haven't heard anyone complain about it
As a citizen of a tropical nation, bellow freezing temperature management in all levels is just freaking scary... :P
as a desert dweller, i agree
Where I live, they do snow clearing well!
You should come to Alberta to check out our snow clearing.
We have snow plows regularly traveling over 85km/h, and rather than melting residential snow on site, we use motor graders to windrow it, then a loader mounted snow blower to load it into a dump trailer and haul it to a centralized site where it melts in the spring.
The melt sites are engineered to collect runoff metals and salt for proper treatment.
0:03 actually (🤓), our town is freaking awesome at snow removal (Ebbs, Tyrol, Austria)
A funny sign to spot in Switzerland is snow plow instructions (little green and red signs); basically in places where "push snow off the road" could mean "now you've buried the underpass" or something similar. For some reason I have not seen this sign in other countries ... I guess they just assume the drivers now where to stop plowing, or something.
Yeah I've never seen these anywhere else
Makes sense.
Some regions in Germany use color coded sticks which they anyways put up to mark the edge of the road.
We have them here in Connecticut on state highways. While they arent full on signs, there are red and green reflectors on the side of the highway.
In my area of the US NE, many overpasses have high chain link fences on the edge, which will catch the snow thrown by the plows, and prevent most of it from falling onto the highway below. It does lead to slightly narrower bridges, as snow piles up on the edge, but works fairly well. Some snow does get down below, but not enough to be damaging.
"Road salt is running out" is a bit of a misleading statement. It's running out in the sense that we are using it far faster than it can be replaced, but it isn't exactly a rare resource.
That being said, you're spot on with environmental impacts. Studies of the great lakes have shown increased salination over the last 100 years. While they're still far from being considered salt-water, it's alarming nevertheless. Some town have begun resorting to alternatives, such as beet juice.
@@hhjhj393 If you so forsee then it certainly must be true.
Oh grand seer!
As a Road/Bridge engineer I always cheer when I see the salt truck go by. That truck is my job security.
In the Minneapolis/St. Paul area, we have pretty awesome snow removal. Seriously. You almost never hear complaints about it, and when you do, it's usually because we've run out of places to put the snow in very urban areas. We're usually out and about within 10-12 hours of a major snow storm. A lot of times sooner. It's a pretty amazing magic trick really.
We pretty much kick ass at snow removal. I figured most places that are cold and got snow were similar. I guess not.
This year especially, we have gotten a ton of snow! If they didn't plow it right away, we would be screwed. Especially since it doesn't seem to melt ha.
As a born and raised Canadian this video is missing a lot, if not most of the information about the work, infrastructure and technology that goes into snow removal in large cities. Sam! If you are interested, I will be more than happy to provide you more Information for a possible follow up video in this subject!
Love your videos,
James
I got spoiled in my hometown. Where I live now, just fifteen miles away, the plowing just doesn’t exist!
Fun fact: a staggered line of plows across a roadway is called a ‘slow tortoise’
Where I live they actually plow snow very well, most time in half a day almost all roads are free, it always amazes me how fast they are here in Switzerland, even sidewalks are cleared when they get just a few cm of snow.
I recently learned about snow removal in Karlskoga, Sweden. A number of years back, they started analysing their snow removal routines from a gender perspective, which garnered interesting results. It was found that since mostly men worked on the city council, deciding what roads got cleared first, it was working very inefficiently. Men are more likely to drive, which meant that roads got preferential treatment in the snow removal process. Women, however, are more likely to trip chain (linking multiple trips together, like dropping the kids at school, going to the store, running errands, etc) and take bikes or walk. Since barely any women made the decisions on snow removal, the result was that bike paths and smaller roads would get cleared way later, leading to women struggling more to go about their daily routines in winter. After changing this around to prioritise walking and biking paths, the city saw an increase in the amount of people who could proceed with business as usual in winter, and an uptick in attitudes towards the snow clearing process across all genders. Most cars could still use the roads, just at a slower pace, so car traffic wasn't massively impacted either.
Very interesting, thanks for sharing!
@@thomaspreudhomme9443 No worries!
And then that was tried in Stockholm causing the entire city to be clogged down for days. What works in a town of 25k doesn't work in a city of millions and a major transport artery of a country. The debacle was known as "feminist plowing".
Gotta love the Swedes. Some proper outside the box thinking there.
man bad squad always present
I wish my area wasn’t so good at snow removal. It’s too good up here in the northeast. You wake up to a fresh blanket of snow, excitedly go out to your car for some fun snow driving, and…. Scraped down to the blacktop roads everywhere. Not a single bit of snow to be found. Most winters I don’t even turn on the 4wd lever in my Jeep.
As I write this, there’s a snow plow removing all the fun from my dead end side street, and another one will be around 10 minutes later.
"Your town sucks at snow remove"
Considering that the historical low temperature here was 7C, I am pretty sure getting a inch of snow would bring all kinds of catastrophes, and the snow would never be removed.
BUT I am also pretty sure that politicians would fund a snow removal service that never come into fruition and they would pocked all the money waiting for the temperature to do its thing...
Vail and many other mountain towns have dialed in snow removal well by this point. With vail’s use of heated streets and I70’s use of gravel rather than salt, the only thing stopping you from having a great winter vacation is a 55 year old lady running off the road in her Nissan trying to get from Denver to grand junction during a snowstorm.
Most cities have weather stations that are specifically designed to measure road conditions. This helps give surface state and temperature and allows specific road forecasts to predict when salt and plowing is necessary
Eh, not really. Here it's at the discretion of the roads superintendent, so part of his job is watching the hourly forecast that the municipality buys and go out and check roads at all hours of the night if there's snow coming. If it's only going down to 0 degrees, just salt the bridges in advance and have a couple people driving routes in plows once in a while on night shift in case there's any snowfall.
does a spinning dartboard and a tray of shots of Hennesy count as sophisticated tools for weather predication? thats pretty much how the weather people predict snow storms here. take 4 shots, put on blind fold spin around 6 times, throw a dart at accumulations. rinse and repeat for timing etc
One of the worst parts of snow removal is the city's ineptitude about how to clear snow out of a roundabout, much less ones that are directly en route to the hospital. Mind you, the only major hospital in my town. Letting snow berms pile so high that it's impossible to see traffic in the circle is really safe, right? It took weeks for them to get front loaders and dump trucks out there to clear that insanely obvious safety hazard.
siberia in chat, normally (as i've heard) salty snow should be then be recicled through melting and then have salt extracted from it, but my city just uses stupid amount of said special salt over the streets and leaves it there. throughout the winter all the roads are covered with gray or brown snow with consistence of porridge. it's bad for tires, boots and paws of stray animals :/
Snow removal is actuall very good in salt lake city even when we get tons of snow.
Maybe Salt Lake City has more salt in the water by default idk lol
I have even seen heated roadways dear hospitals that are on steep hills this sounds like a good idea. What I really hate is when the salt roads prematurely or clear roads prematurely leaving a thick layer of ice behind rather than crunchy snow that is easier to drive on. Snow is always safer than ice
Here in Gloucester, MA we have dozens maybe hundreds of citizens with trucks who are contracted out on state, local, and private levels. By the time snow falls, all the boys are ripping Dunks and making that under the table cash money. Works extremely well.
how is it under the table when they are contracted by state, local? the state and local doesnt pay cash, at least not here. you are a 1099, you get a check. private plow jockeys plowing gas stations, Joe blows driveway might get under the table cash
last night on the way home from school, on the highway I saw several snow plow trucks with salt in the back on standby waiting for our 4+ inches of snow to fall. Not a single snowflake ever fell. I wonder when they finally went home.
I'm extremely disappointed because my only field trip of the year got canceled due to the weather forecast but school was not canceled.
DOT plow drivers will sit there for days. they'd damned better for what their paid. private plow contractors if they are smart do seasonal contracts, they get paid snow or no snow
Where I live, snow plowing (not removal) is very effective. I live right beside a medical center so that might have something to do with it but even elsewhere in town, snow plowing is very good. Snow removal, on the other hands, not so much.
For years, I never bothered to get winter tire because there really wasn't that much of a need (I changed that 10 years ago for a variety of reasons). Even though we get tons of snow, it's always fairly drive-able and I've never gotten stuck.
Cross the border into Quebec and that is not the same thing. I had the displeasure of driving just a few hundred meters crossing the bridge into Quebec to get to the office during an early season snow storm when I did not have my snow tires on yet. Not a problem, I thought, I drove for 15 years without snow tires. The long drive in Ontario was easy. Never any slips or fear of getting stuck. A pleasure. The snow storm was pretty much not an issue. I barely slowed down. Crossed the border to Quebec and nearly got stuck three times (that's in maybe a hundred meters), once in the middle of an intersection, my car slip sliding dangerously (and I'm used to slip sliding, since I used all seasons for 15 years). It is criminal how badly they plow in Gatineau. I always knew that and only used to drive on the Quebec side at Christmas visiting family but this was horrendously worse.
Honestly, Gatineau/Ottawa border is probably the worst way to compare Quebec to Ontario. Gatineau budget for their roads (and many other things...) is terrible.
And yeah, this video isn't about snow removal, but plowing.
I like when you end the video with a summary. It makes video feel finished; some of the other videos feels cut off. So I appreciate this format much more. Just some feedback
The city where I went to college was amazingly bad at it. They would only plow the major roads until after the snow started falling (even if there was a lot of it), and the residential streets wouldn't get plowed until 24h after the snow ended. Meanwhile, senior citizens (the only people home during the day) had to shovel parts of the street so they could get their cars out. By the time the plows came, enough people had had to drive that the road was a solid sheet of ice that the plows couldn't remove, and they wouldn't put salt on it. They would use lame excuses like "we can't send the plows out until we know how much snow we're getting".
Meanwhile, my hometown starts plowing as soon as there's enough snow to be plow-able, and plows all the streets (including the tiny residential ones) repeatedly until the snow is over and the roads are clear.
I live near Edmonton Alberta and I do snow removal for a living. People in other places of the world always make it seem so difficult to remove snow. We work around the clock 24/7 till it’s done snowing. We got 30cm of snow a few days ago and roads were clear by the following day. We’re just used to it, it’s not that hard to clear snow with the right equipment and knowledge.
Thought it was once off but now I'm curious and happy that the we are getting more videos than usual
“Plowing is harder than it looks”
I can confirm
Wait we’re talking about Snow plowing?
NO WAIT NO-
If you play HOI4 you haven't plowed anyone
@@deeznutz32108 except fellow HOI4 players :)
In the UK when the Hammersmith Flyover in London was built it was fitted with an electric anti-ice system. Unfortunately Hammersmith Borough Council didn't like the size of the electricity bill for the first winter (1962-63) of £4,800 (around £100,000 in 2021) and threatened to turn it off unless London County Council assisted them. The LCC took over the payment if this bill. I don't know when this system was turn off or stop working but it was removed around 2000. The bridge has suffered from salt ever since the heating system stopped being used.
Chicago is one of the few places where the snow removal is superb. We had 2 feet of snow one night and the streets were clean by 9am
County Engineer here, I can tell you some places also don't have the same funding. Like our county we need to mix sand with the salt which doesn't melt the snow as well. Ask me anything here in the comments
What's your favourite flavour of ice cream?
Why do the snow plows keep destroying my mailbox?
Can I borrow $50?
subs or dubs?
I thought the sand was for grip
Snow is just so magical.❄️
Left out the most important step: snow bank removal. You can't just keep pushing it to the side as if there's infinite space over there. Here, trucks with a giant snow-blower attachment on the front removes the banks of snow that pile up between road and sidewalk, and throw into into dump trucks that follow along with them.
My absolute favorite is spending a morning doing the shoveling that is required by the town, only for the towns plow trucks to come through and throw snow everywhere I snowed. They also use tractors to clear four sidewalks in our little town but they won’t do the other three.
thats why you wait till the 12th hr of your town's snow removal time limit, pay a bunch of teenagers to do it. the state/city/county etc doesnt give a shit they just buried your quarter mile sidewalk again but god help you if you get a shovel full of snow on a state/county/city road
"Our salt supplies are running out"
LOL you earn a thumbs down for this one today, sorry that's so overly idiotic it's damaging my brain
Today's fact: Marie Curie, one of the people who discovered radium from uranium, was the first scientist to be awarded two Nobel prizes.
Cool
Cool
Also, salt becomes ineffective in the coldest states, like Alaska. They use gravel instead, because salt only lowers the melting point of water from 32F to around 10F. Salting in Alaska would create an ice rink out of roads.
This is another video for which I am too swiss to understand ^^. Here the road maintenance will start as soon as snow falls (could be in the middle of the night). We also have road priorities but also different agencies for different roads. Like the country is responsible to clear the highways, the canton/state is responsible for main roads and the city/village is responsible for the other roads. That way a huge crew starts clearing the street and when people start going to work in the morning most streets are cleared.
Also here we don't remove the snow from the city but just push it away enough for cars and pedestrians to pass.
Also there is no need to have the streets completely free of snow because people have winter tires (more grip on snow) and for hilly areas cars get equipped with snow chains.
I live in the countryside on a small residential road and when the last strong snowfall happened our street was covered in snow but plowed just enough to be able to drive very slowly. After 300m when entering the next street (also small residential street) you could again drive full speed because of how clear the road was.
The Waffle House found its new host.
The Waffle House has found its new host
Waffle
Ever since i moved out to the Suburbs the snow removal is immediate here.
Came from Toronto out to Ajax Ontario. I am usually out at night and at 3am during peak snowstorm hours I still see the plowers running.
A solid reason why something like solar roadways that really wouldn't produce a whole lot of energy in cities would be nice is that you can embed heating elements and make the road melt the ice and snow. Suddenly you won't have issues most of the time