I've been watching the snowfall since yesterday. The city got itself organized early and had trucks out laying down salt even before the snow covered the streets. The first plows came around our area around 11:45 last night and made another couple of passes before 3:00. They were back very early this morning.
But here is where we have a problem. The plows push all the snow to the sides to make sure that the streets are cleared for traffic. In doing so they block in all the cars parked on the street and in the driveways. So, out go the people with shovels and blowers to uncover their cars and create openings for those cars to be able to drive on the street. But where is that snow going that is being taken off the cars? You can't shovel it onto the sidewalks and block people into their homes and the front yards are already full of snowdrifts and there is no room for any more. So where is that snow going? Back onto the center of the street. No sooner had the people on the block managed to dig out some openings for their cars when the plows were back and blocked them all back in again. And out again went the people, re-digging out their cars and putting the snow back in the street.
There was a bit of a shouting match down the block between a few shovelers and the plow operators. The plow operators want that shoveled snow to be put somewhere else other than back into the street. The shovelers reasonably pointed out there there was NO place else to put the snow. They already were parked in snow caverns.
The amount of snow we got puts us into a catch-22 situation--darned if we do and darned if we don't. We're running into some basic mathematical/scientific facts. You can't put more into a container than that container can hold. Unless and until some of that snow melts we are going to be spending a whole lot of time digging and re-digging and re-re-digging, moving the snow accumulation from curb to street and to curb again.
And I am sending up some very sincere prayers that please, please let this be the last winter I have to spend in a snow area.
4 comments:
For the main streets in our area they bring dump trucks and cart away the excess snow that has no place to be put without blocking traffic or parking. If you live on the smaller side streets it's pretty much like you describe. Shovel, shovel and then shovel again.
Two postings on snow?! I think you really need to get out to LV and warm up a bit.
1) I believe the problem you describe, of the snow plows blocking people in, mainly affect just one side of the street, as the the plows are on an angle.
2) In some places they have machines that melt the snow and/or send it down into the sewer.
X,
Pushing the snow to one side may be the case if a street is one way. On a two way street they do both sides of the street, thus blocking in both sides.
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