I came home from my long Thanksgiving trip Sunday to find my a three-foot wall of snow blocking the sidewalk to my house and more Volkswagen-eating chunky-monkey plow mounds at my alley entrances. I have now burned off all the turkey leftovers and whatever that cream is that globs the green beans together.
Evidently hearing complaints from several shovelers and not wanting his constituents to lose their self-reliance and become dependent on big government like their country cousins, Aberdeen Mayor Travis Schaunaman added a slot to last night’s city council agenda to stress to us that spending money on snow gates on the city plows will not ease our windrow-woes:
Schaunaman asked Aberdeen Public Works Director Robin Bobzien to explain the process his department used to remove snow starting at 4 a.m. Sunday, and why snow gates wouldn’t have been effective.
Bobzien said that in his experience, the devices work when there is limited snow — not when nearly a foot and a half falls within a few days.
“They present challenges beyond that 5- or 6-inch range. Anything beyond that you end up with snow that goes over the blade, it goes over the gate, it goes around the end, there’s just too much volume,” he said.
Bobzien said even Bismarck and Sioux Falls would have suspended the use of snow gates for 16 inches of snow, especially due to this particular system’s consistency.
“This was not a fluffy snow. This was snowball-making snow,” he said. “Snow gates would not have been a useful function for us.”
Schaunaman also confirmed with Bobzien that implementing snow gates would increase total dollars spent for each removal — which generally costs the city about $100,000 — by 25% [Erin Ballard, “Aberdeen City Council: Weekend Weather Prompts Snow Removal Discussion {paywall},” Aberdeen American News, 2019.12.03].
Forget the snow gates; just spend that $25K-per-plowing on coupons to Red Rooster, delivered by the Aberdeen PD to every house where they see those plow piles cleared from driveways and sidewalks within 48 hours of the last falling flake. Incentivize shoveling and boost the economy!
Nobody cares about “The Doper State” but in my little town (41,000 pop.) the town owns a small fleet of Bobcats and trailers that go down residential streets and dig out people’s driveways. We don’t have many alleys. We’ve had this method in operation for over forty years and the operators are darned fast. They have to be because when you live where there’s almost no humidity, snow just disappears (without melting), when it’s still well below freezing. We also have chinooks.
No reason why Aberdeen couldn’t have such a fleet that can also be used for lots of thing the city needs. Like mass planting of more trees, huh?
Porter, do you have any idea how much that small Bobcat/trailer fleet adds to the cost of each snow removal? I can certainly see the merits of having that separate fleet handle the clean-up work: you let the big plows clear the streets as quickly as possible while the smaller machines come by to handle the detailed work.
Can’t we program Roombas to handle jobs like this?
I can’t believe the whiners who think their city should use snow gates. We get a lot of snow in Madison, WI. The priority here is speed, not coddling property owners. We expect the city to clear the streets as fast as possible. That means we don’t expect them to tidy up our driveways, etc. Not clearing walks will get you a hefty ticket, but you have to snitch on your neighbors. If you can’t handle winter here, including shoveling out your own drive way, move some place else. Neighbors help seniors, or there is a volunteer group to help them shovel out, or they can pay a kid to do it.
I live on a busy street that gets plowed out multiple times in big storms. They don’t let the snow build up on streets like mine. I don’t expect the city to come around each time and tidy up.
It depends on what you want. If you’re lazy, you want snow gates, so the government takes care of your problems for you.
Million dollar idea, Cory. We’ll call them Snoombas.
Snow gates are incredible. I love them. Even when it snows a lot. Yes, the snow goes over the top of the gate but I can tell you the amount that goes over the gate is a lot less than if the snow gates weren’t used. Before our town had snow gates, I would get home at 6:00 PM from work, it’s dark and the snow that had been pushed into my drive way by the snow plow was frozen. It would take me a solid hour to an hour and a half to move the frozen mountain of snow and then I’d still have to get the kids fed and homework completed. Snow gates are a pleasure of living within a municipality.
Then put me in the whiner category we end up with an impenetrable barrier of frozen boulders three feet high the city told me the gates are too fragile to be maintained. What a bunch of malarkey they could drop the gate for at least a few feet on a heavy snowfall so you had enough gap to get in and out breaking through that stuff is almost impossible even with a monster snowblower. As I read the post I was thinking exactly what Porter went to say then send out a crew of skid steers we pay plenty of taxes I ain’t buyin it adds 25% to every removal. Prove it. In Sioux Falls one councilwoman wanted the gates the rest said no but it was put to a vote of the people who said heck yes we want those gates. The city wastes so much money on equipment I know people who maintain rural roads and do digging they buy the city’s old equipment and say there is no reason for all the new stuff they buy. Another government snow job it’s just not their money, they want the easy way out and don’t want to maintain those gates. We’re paying that dang dollar per foot of frontage and for who? To support all the stupid TIFs for the big boys give us snow removal or give us our money back. I wonder where we could find a skid steer in a town like this it’s ridiculous maybe the whole thing should be privatized or the skid steer portion that might scare em into shape. Let’s put that to a vote of the people we need to start using that more.
The weather on tv just informed me that my littletown is 35.5″ of snow above normal for October and November. Average is 12.7″ All eight basins in the Rockies are above normal. Whew! But, as normal, it’s all melted and the roads were dry today.
Oh, yeah. More snow on Thursday.
Didn’t the city have plows out before the snow ended? If not, why not?
In our case there was no way for them to plan ahead for this snowfall because the Climate Scientists (aka National Weather Service) got it all wrong!!! I’d love to believe these scientists, I really would, but …
Sounds like it was worse than forecast, but a simple nose stuck outside the door would tell you it was snowing and maybe something should be done about it. Even Boy Scouts are taught to be prepared.
St. Paul and Minneapolis don’t use snow gates, but they should, for the same reason others have mentioned. Digging out from a big snowfall is hard. Having to do it repeatedly is backbreaking. I don’t know if there are snow blowers that will chew that stuff up.
I am so much in line with what Mr. Pay commented “I can’t believe the whiners who think their city should use snow gates.”
grudznick hates whiners so much…golly I owe Mr. Pay another breakfast I guess, but I am so livid thinking about these whiners at the moment I can’t even write out the $22.00 for the eggs Benedict…
By chance I am sorting old mail one guy in town sent out a large postcard advertisement he will remove your “windrow left by the city at the end of driveway” for a one-time payment of $150 for the whole season. Not bad I guess still seems we are paying the city to push a pile onto our driveway and this should be a shared expense that would help keep expenses down especially for the elderly. Too much to expect of neighbors.
Sioux Falls has not been using snow Gates during our 1 to 2 inch snowfalls.
I shoveled a snow windrow twice this past week. :o(
Climatologists, not meteorologists who predict weather, are actually very accurate in their predictions. This story was in Numlock News by Walt Hickey:
Hot Models
A study in Nature looked at the historical accuracy of climate forecasting models to answer a thorny question: how good are people at forecasting the climate long term? That’s been a considerable point of contention, at least in the political realm, with detractors of climate science arguing that the predictive models run hot, that is to say they forecast more warming compared to what actually ends up happening. The authors of the new study found 17 climate models from 1970 to 1990, all of which estimated carbon dioxide concentrations and what the global average temperature would be in the future. Of those 17 climate models, 14 correctly predicted how much the earth would warm based on atmospheric CO2 concentrations, while just one “ran hot” and predicted more warming per CO2 concentration and two “ran cold” and predicted less. That’s remarkably good predictive accuracy, especially because the climate modelers then were relying on much less computational power.
Good guessers are these witching dowsers called Climatologists.