azurelunatic | Snow :/

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snow

Snow :/

Snow is melting!

This morning on my way from the poorly-cleared drop-off point to the bus, I slipped and nearly fell on some wet-looking ice.

The transit system is slowly becoming unfucked. As the streets de-ice, they're repairing the buses that have been damaged by their own tire chains.

As I told Toronto Ponytail this morning downstairs, it's not specifically that the snow was that bad, it's that the snow was that bad for the infrastructure we have. Nobody* has shovels, there aren't enough snowplows, and he agreed that it's actually entirely sensible for people to assume they're not going anywhere for a week and to shop accordingly. Especially when the store's incoming deliveries are going to be disrupted too.

This climate stuff. It just isn't natural.

* People who have lived here through the last big snow probably have shovels, unless their evil ex took them on the way out. Cough, glare, spit.

** Climate change deniers will be vaccinated and fed to starving polar bears.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

YUP. I keep making this point to midwesterners who do not understand how eight inches of snow could shut down a city.

Also, we have a lot more hills than they do.

So many hills.

One of the Oldschool Fen has been watching one particular icy Hill in appalled nervousness.

There isn't enough infrastructure investment in what is usually a once-yearly and usually mild event.

I was talking to a Midwestern-living friend who accepts that the PNW just doesn't have the infrastructure, but wasn't sure what that meant. So I went and found the list of winter supplies for the city I work in, which numbers things like, for the mid-November to mid-March season: 1 backhoe, 2 500-gallon-capacity trucks to deliver the de-icing solution, 2200 gallons of salt brine de-icing solution, 500 lbs rock salt.

For 70 miles of roadway, including access routes to I-5.

That's it. That's the entire supply.