Actually they are worse, cars compress the snow till it get's icy.
Once you salted the road it's ok, but someone needs to salt it first.
And I don't agree with the fact that New York is doing fine with an inch of snow, when I was in NY it wasn't doing fine and there was NO snow.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Yeah, what kind of a first world metropolis can afford that.
Hope is the denial of reality
Affort what?
I think you are missing my point.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Vehicles to clear some of the snow and salt the roads.
Hope is the denial of reality
I can't help but picture scores of tiny cars crawling behind these huge trucks with snow plows attached, only using the streets immediately after its been cleared of snow.
but thats not right, cause that would cause delays, and those don't happen cause of snow.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
What ever happened to your confidence in government planning?
I do like how you're pretending this is some sort of mission impossible when it generally takes place in NYC several times a year.
Hope is the denial of reality
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
It's not, but it makes things somewhat slower. You said so yourself about trains, but deny that on extremely busy tracks this leads to delays. Or that snow and ice blocks junctions..
An inch or two of snow is a trivial issue. People in parts of the country that get regular snow seem to manage just fine. It seems to me that it's the "unknown" that puts people into a panic, not the difficulty of navigating the situation.
When there's half a foot of snow, not an inch.
Hope is the denial of reality
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
It's difficult for regions that don't "normally" get snow or ice. They can't "navigate" the situation because they don't have the equipment or personnel to deal with it. That's why southern airports may shut down when temps are at/near freezing level, and even fog can turn into hoarfrost. That kind of precipitation demands de-icing the planes or runways, rolling out elevated pedestrian walkways, and all sorts of things that aren't part of their normal planning. Ditto for roadways and highways.
It's true -- a thin layer of ice below the Mason-Dixon line can throw all transportation into a tizzy.
Isn't that because people are used to it and can therefore adapt more easily? When I was in a snowy Montreal everything just went a bit slower, everybody was used to that so no complaining.
Don;t know what the minimum snow to cause problems for railway traffic is, but with the two inches we have it does accumulate under trains and chunks fall off, and in junctions, which get stuck and have to be unstuck. Doesn't take that much time, but if the schedule is full and tight, that will have big effects. Freezing + wet + moving parts = problems, it's not rocket science.When there's half a foot of snow, not an inch.
And the only really big problems occur during snow fallling out of the sky, and at that time the roads are not cleared yet, as its still falling, and the visibility is greatly reduced, so then everyone has to go slower, trains too. Visibility being, you know, essential for safety. After the snow has fallen, delays aren't so bad, like I said the biggest problem is junctions freezing or being blocked by chunks of ice.
Keep on keepin' the beat alive!
There must be something HAPPY in this tangent about weather, but it's not clear what that is.
Jay Wilson, the guy largely credited with everything that is wrong with Diablo III (and the "fuck that loser" comment directed towards D2 staff) has finally been removed from his position as game director for Diablo III.
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Can they remake the game now?
Hope is the denial of reality
Again, people seem to manage in New York without massive car pileups...
Hope is the denial of reality
Er...? 2 inches of snow? Aren't you guys all snowy up in Switzerland?
Look, when the snowfall gets really fast (say, 5 cm an hour), cities get in trouble, even if they have good snow response. Then there simply aren't enough plows and salt trucks to keep up with things. But slow, steady snow is not an issue unless you get unholy amounts of accumulation (I'm thinking 50-100+ cm). That's when even hardened cities start to shut down - you run out of places to put the snow, so you need to start using snow melters, heavy equipment to truck snow to open areas (rivers/lakes/parks/etc.), and more. So that takes time. But absent either really fast accumulation or steady snowfall for days on end, most northern cities shouldn't have much trouble dealing with standard storms. You keep main arteries open as a matter of course, and clear out residential areas on a more intermittent basis.
I'm not saying this is easy by any stretch of the imagination - certainly Chicago invests a lot of money in their emergency preparedness, with a war room and detailed tracking of weather, snow clearance, etc. But it's not really rocket science either; it just takes money and organization. For cities that regularly experience significant snowfall, it's done as a matter of course - if you don't adequately keep a city running in the winter, you have trouble come mayoral elections.
Again, New York is already a chaos without snow.
Swiss people think it's chaos when trains are more than 5 minutes late and if you can't drive 80 km/h on the street anymore.
At no time villages where cut of, everyone is doing fine. But you need to slow down, you need to keep more distance, because the roads are very slippery. And I don't see how the amount of snow is relevant. We had 30 cm in November and I had the same problems driving as with the 5 cm we have now.
You also have to consider that we live in very hilly terrain, traction is more important here than in the flat lands.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Gasparilla
"In a field where an overlooked bug could cost millions, you want people who will speak their minds, even if they’re sometimes obnoxious about it."
Well, the 2 inches of snow we got this weekend made me happy. Took the kid out to play in it, her first time really getting to enjoy it. Made snowmen, pulled her in the sled (my parents just had to buy a sled for her; they'll be to blame when she ends up spoiled). It's melting pretty quickly now but at least for a day and a half we had fun with it.
2 inches of snow here a few days ago. Everything was running as normal.
Hope is the denial of reality
Cornfields have certain trade-offs, especially when their universities are considered "major economic hubs".
Yeah, having a few large snow machines to clean up the major streets and a few more small ones to clean up student housing areas is really expensive.
Hope is the denial of reality