The country is hysterical – not in the funny sense, but the psychiatric one. If there is any chance a few flakes will fall, the place goes into Panic Mode. Bread and Milk!
And, road slurry.
This is a briny liquid mixture applied to the roads in lieu of the formerly popular salt shaker-style application of . . . salt. The government trucks which apply it – being funded by taxpayer dollars – apply the brine with great liberality.
Can’t be too safe.Â
But what about the Earf?
All this salt can’t be good for it. Remember the Romans? When they really wanted to make a point to a conquered people, they salted the Earf.
Nowadays, “our” government does the salting.
And we’re forced t pay for it, too – something not even the Romans did to the people they conquered.
. . .
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Out here in the wild west they use copious amounts of magnesium chloride instead of salt. It doesn’t rot out your car as bad, but it makes a huge mess of the windows, and it stays around for days after. As soon as the stuff on the side of the road starts to melt the splash back just covers your vehicle. The work truck has a topper on the back and the crud gets so thick on the back that I have to re-wet the squeegee multiple times to scrape it off. And we go through gallons of windshield washer fluid. The squeegee juice at the gas stations are just brown with the stuff no way should you use it on your windshield. Forget about wearing nice clothes because you’ll be wearing it as soon as you get out of your car, or brush up against a car in the parking lot, or get within 5 feet of a vehicle.
You’re rolling the dice on washing your vehicle, because you might drive through a patch of melting snow that will just trash your hard work. But if you don’t then you are driving around on dry pavement with a filthy car.
The first few snows they usually just dump the stuff all over. Then toward the end of the season the CDOT communications director starts showing up on the news warning us all that they might run out of mag if the snow continues! Oh NO! Well, maybe if they didn’t overdo it in November they’d have enough to last the season. It’s not like it never snowed in Colorado before!
A friend was on a 100′ tall ramp around San Antonio when a truck whipped over in front of him. The road was already icy so he was being cautious but not as slow as most(wrecking out)drivers. The truck was spraying this white crud they now use and covered his Camry with the stuff temporarily blinding him. He gets the windshield to where he can see, goes on his way and can’t get the crud off his car for days. Looks like he’s gonna have a bit of a problem making it look like it did before.
Houston is socked in for the 2nd time this season(or was early in the week)with ice. I’ve seen Houston iced before but don’t recall it twice in one season. That’s that darn global warming, uh, climate change for you.
For those not too eaten up with Algorism, the temp in the world has been dropping for decades and esp. the last 10 years. We may be looking at another mini-ice age and the global warmers will certainly be appreciated when they counter the cooling with their warmness.
Academia in this country is so Marxist it’s unbelievable. Where are all the logical minds? Done turned out by the commies and such and working at a real job I suspect.
Wouldn’t it just be cheaper for gubberment to buy everyone winter rated snow tires along with providing everyone ‘universal basic income’? #sarc
Hi Something,
Don’t give them hints… ever! 🙂
Welcome to the “Panic Belt”, ya’ll!
The greenies are here in NW Indiana (they consider Gary, East Chicago and Hammond industrial zones to be disaster areas for the most part). Never mind they all use the many products made here, but that is a different discussion.
Between the skyrocketing price of road salt over the last decade (used to be super cheap) and pressure from the green groups, the local street departments uses a fraction of what they once did. Especially the state road department. They use a weird brine of liquid made with, get this, beets. I am guessing that is what they are using on your road too, since it looks like it (the lines). You have to apply it before hand or it doesn’t work at all, it has to be under the snow and ice not on top. If that is what it is, they are doing it right…….. Because if they don’t do it before, they can’t use it. It won’t work at all.
Never the less, the roads are much more hazardous during and for days (yes days) after storms. Because even when it works, it’s not nearly as effective as road salt. We can’t get two feet of lake effect snow in an afternoon, and frankly they need to be able to use any tool they can use. But they are hobbled by that in addition to the usual government inefficiencies.
In the case of my own town, road salt is only used on busy roads, curves and intersections. It takes much longer for the roads to improve. They are trying to get people to not park on roads during storms, but its tough for those in old parts of town with little off street parking.
On a side note. An unintended consequence of the feds mandate to separate the sanitary sewers from road drains, is that road salts and oils end up in Lake Michigan when all was treated before dumping (except during heavy storms when everything was dumped, yuk). They thought they would save millions by not having to treat mere rainwater runoff, but of course they can’t, opps…………
Sometimes, the very worst thing you can do, in places where it gets much colder than southwestern VA, like my home state of NH, is to salt the road.
Dry, cold, grainy snow blows off, is easy to drive through and relatively non slippery.
Throw a bunch of salt on it, and it turns into a greasy, hydroplaning inducing, slick, slippery wreck machine.