Snow cover...
Let's talk about roads for a moment. Back in Maryland, snowy roads are cleared pretty quickly, either by warm weather, salt, or plows that scrape all the way down. And by "cleared," I mean, "You see the road."
It's a little different here. It doesn't get warm enough to melt the snow and ice, it's too cold to efficiently salt the roads, and the plows rumble by regularly, but for some reason leave an inch or two behind. As a result, all but the busiest roads have a solid white cover:
That grey part is not asphalt; it's dirty ice. Every once in a while, there'll be a small patch of real road:
...but pretty much, we're driving on snow most of the time. Here's the alley behind our house:
It's not as hard to drive on this as I thought it would be. By and large, it's not terribly slippery; you just have to be aware it's there. The city tosses gravel down at intersections for a little traction, which seems to work, though one colleague reports that he's slid right through more intersections than he cares to count.
There are advantages. The Pathfinder has a terrible turning radius ordinarily; now, on a narrow snow-covered road, I find that if I need to pull a U-turn, I can turn the wheel, gun the engine, and fishtail the truck right around where I want it to be. My colleague P. laughs, shakes her head, and tells me Fargo boys get fishtailing out of their systems when they're 16. I find that difficult to believe. Man, that's fun.
The vehicles are working pretty well, though the Pathfinder's four-wheel-drive system may be on its last legs. I'm not sure whether the groaning it makes when I'm coasting or braking is the last gasp of the transfer case, or simply the sound of the truck complaining about the cold. It's almost impossible to shift it in the morning for the first few minutes – it really needs a warmup. But once warmed, it drives and holds its grip quite well.
The van, meanwhile, is only front-wheel-drive, but it has magic antilock brakes and a magic traction-control system. Stomp on the brakes on ice, and it comes to a smooth stop. Stomp on the gas on ice, and it very politely accelerates only as fast as it can without slipping.
Did I say magic? Well, almost magic. One of us (the cute one) managed to pop the van into the back of a pickup truck a few days ago and crush the front bumper (right). We'll find out on Tuesday how much styrofoam on the inside needs to be replaced.
We still receive e-mail school closing alerts for Montgomery County, Maryland. I gotta say, there's little more satisfying than checking e-mail just as Joey and Katie are walking out the front door in the morning so I can tell them MoCo's schools are closed for the day on account of the half-inch of snow they received the night before. Joey and Katie shake with outrage as they set out into their minus-30 wind-chill Fargo morning.
It's a little different here. It doesn't get warm enough to melt the snow and ice, it's too cold to efficiently salt the roads, and the plows rumble by regularly, but for some reason leave an inch or two behind. As a result, all but the busiest roads have a solid white cover:
That grey part is not asphalt; it's dirty ice. Every once in a while, there'll be a small patch of real road:
...but pretty much, we're driving on snow most of the time. Here's the alley behind our house:
It's not as hard to drive on this as I thought it would be. By and large, it's not terribly slippery; you just have to be aware it's there. The city tosses gravel down at intersections for a little traction, which seems to work, though one colleague reports that he's slid right through more intersections than he cares to count.There are advantages. The Pathfinder has a terrible turning radius ordinarily; now, on a narrow snow-covered road, I find that if I need to pull a U-turn, I can turn the wheel, gun the engine, and fishtail the truck right around where I want it to be. My colleague P. laughs, shakes her head, and tells me Fargo boys get fishtailing out of their systems when they're 16. I find that difficult to believe. Man, that's fun.
The vehicles are working pretty well, though the Pathfinder's four-wheel-drive system may be on its last legs. I'm not sure whether the groaning it makes when I'm coasting or braking is the last gasp of the transfer case, or simply the sound of the truck complaining about the cold. It's almost impossible to shift it in the morning for the first few minutes – it really needs a warmup. But once warmed, it drives and holds its grip quite well.
The van, meanwhile, is only front-wheel-drive, but it has magic antilock brakes and a magic traction-control system. Stomp on the brakes on ice, and it comes to a smooth stop. Stomp on the gas on ice, and it very politely accelerates only as fast as it can without slipping.
Did I say magic? Well, almost magic. One of us (the cute one) managed to pop the van into the back of a pickup truck a few days ago and crush the front bumper (right). We'll find out on Tuesday how much styrofoam on the inside needs to be replaced.We still receive e-mail school closing alerts for Montgomery County, Maryland. I gotta say, there's little more satisfying than checking e-mail just as Joey and Katie are walking out the front door in the morning so I can tell them MoCo's schools are closed for the day on account of the half-inch of snow they received the night before. Joey and Katie shake with outrage as they set out into their minus-30 wind-chill Fargo morning.
posted by Tom at 10:25 AM
2 Comments:
There are after market bumpers you might want to consider. :)
You're absolutely right: MoCo called what may go down as the most pussified "snow day" EVAH. We were kinda hoping you'd have missed this news item, as it was just shamefully wimpy to cancel school -- county-wide! -- for such a light dusting (a half-inch, tops).
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