Blizzarding

"Don't read the comments," they say. And yet, I do. And this week along the South Coast from Rhode Island to Cape Cod, the comments have been about snow removal. Of course, folks are frustrated. And I do have to say that most people have tried to keep their frustration in check. Still, many are questioning how it could take so long to get plows out. As a geographer and former plow operator with extra time on his hands, I have at least some partial answers.

And first, not to oversell it: I was a plow operator only briefly, long ago and far away. So I know more than most people about this, but I am not nearly as expert as the people currently doing the work. With that caveat ...

About 10 years ago, I was writing "Socialist Snow Removal" for this blog and did some digging (as it were) online to find a photo of something like my old plow. I had plowed for two winters in the mid-80s, first with my boss's landscaping truck and then with my own 1979 Scout II -- much like the one below, but without the cool light on top. I did this work in the days before we took photos of everything: no pics, but it did happen!

I have been thinking a lot about that experience -- and that particular vehicle -- during the aftermath of the winter storm that struck the northeastern United States from February 22 to 23 of this year (and indeed this week as I write). 

After a string of mild winters and almost no winter at all last year, we have been rather walloped this year. Much of our region received close to a foot of mostly dry, fluffy snow exactly two weeks earlier. Heavy snow Sunday into Monday closed many schools -- including my university -- from Monday into Tuesday. By the end of Tuesday, snow removal efforts had been largely successful, and we salvaged at least part of a school/work week.

We expected that tthe subsequent storm would be comparable; it turns out it was much more than that, especially right along the coast. With about half of the snow from the previous storm still on the ground -- there had been no warm days since that "big" storm, much of the region received a foot or two of new snow, with more toward the South Coast, where three feet landed three sizable cities and a few dozen towns.  Our house is under the number "37" on this map of snow totals

We had finally had just enough warming that much of this was heavier snow (only 8:1 snow:water according to the calculations of a friend and colleague who lives nearby and did his doctorate on snow. This is the proverbial "heart attack" snow -- a term I take very seriously, having known two people in Bridgewater who died shoveling about 20 years ago.

The region was fresh off of a success with the rapid clearing two weeks ago. We know this would be more difficult, but even I was surprised by just how much more difficult. Hence this post to provide a little bit of an exploration of some differences between big snow and really big snow.

First of all, this snow fell fast and heavy in high wind. Barometric pressure offshore was comparable to that of a Category 2 hurricane.and winds were around 30mph with frequent gusts around 60mph. And the worst of this was overnight. Removing any snow during the storm would have been both dangerously difficult and relatively futile. My normal practice is to shovel at least a path every few hours to get ahead of the storm. I did not touch a flake until it was over, and I think very few other people did. So the full 2-3 feet was on the ground in many places before a single flake got moved. 

Moving three feet of snow from pavement onto lawns even deeper than that was the first extra. challenge.  I did not realize some of the other factors until this fellow passed our house late Tuesday afternoon. I had never seen an excavator used as the primary removal equipment on a street. They usually come along after plows -- especially in parking lots -- to move piles that the plows have made. In this case, the excavator made two passes, with a little extra attention in the nearby intersection. 

This created a single cleared lane. A ten-wheel dump truck came out a few minutes later, and the two of them spent at least 10 minutes on our block before moving to the next block south. Thinking in terms of person-hours and equipment hours, they spent about 6x more effort on our block than they would have done two weeks ago. And they were doing so with more specialized equipment and operators than previously. There is always a role for these big pieces of equipment and special operators, but rarely on side streets. This is why it took a relatively long for them to get to us, even though we are in the center of town and there were no roads closed by trees as far as I know

A Small Miracle

Charming little towns like ours have some places where the streets are too twisty and narrow for current standards for access by fire truck. One such street is Williams Street, which would be difficult to reach with a big truck on a clear summer's day. So it is remarkable that firefighters were able to reach an historic home that developed a chimney fire while all of this cleanup was just starting. The people in the house did not even know of the fire until neighbors saw the smoke. There seems to have been significant damage, but there were no injuries and the building appears to have been saved. 

All Hands: Mutual Aid Near and Far

A key part of my storm preparation was to hit the ATM so I would have plenty of cash should someone ask for shoveling work at Whaling House. I am glad I was able to pay someone with a younger back and heart and lungs to do about 2/3 of the work here, with the rest of us doing the rest. Even he was stretched by the effort, so I am glad we were able to pay him fairly. 

Even though we had not been able to do all of the clearing at our place, we were ready to answer the call a couple days later, when neighbors took to social media to recruit and organize volunteers. On the Friday following the storm, the two of us joined 9 neighbors aged about 8 to 35 to free up some corners used as bus stops and to connect them to sidewalks. As we did this detailed shovel work, town crews continued their work, with the help of trucks from Vermont. Fortunately, this coastal storm left many of them available, even though they typically get a lot more snow there than here. 

Roads are still a mess here, but with many hands, we are re-opening.

Applied Mathematics

The upshot from all of this is that the relationship between snowfall totals and time required for removal is decidedly non-linear. Or rather, it is linear over decidedly short intervals. Six inches might take twice as much time as three inches, but a foot will almost certainly require more than twice as much as the six inches. And three feet? Well, we've seen what happens there.  The relationship between total and timing features discontinuities, thresholds, and feedback loops of various kinds! 

Lagniappe: Fiscal Oddity

My long-ago snow removal work was mostly -- maybe entirely -- for private clients. We cleared parking lots and driveways, not streets and highways. So I did not gain any insight into the funding mechanisms in the public sector. 

But as an observant resident here in Massachusetts, I have long been aware of an interesting quirk in how funding is handled here. For local roads, the funding is extremely local. Each of the 351 fiefdoms (cities and towns) is responsible for its own road and sidewalk clearing. We have "local control" but state rules guiding that control. One of the rules is that municipal budget items cannot be increased in the middle of a fiscal year. 

Whatever is in the budget it what can be spent on libraries, schools, police, fire, parks, and so on. Because snow is variable, the one exception is snow removal. It is the only item that can be raised mid-year, so most cities and towns put a minimal number in the budget and hope for the best, amending the budget mid-year. I am astonished that we have not seen these headlines yet, but within a week or two, we will stasrt to learn the budget impacts of all of the above, with breathless lamentations about the budgets busted by this snowfall.