February is a fickle month in New England. It can rain, it can snow, it can sleet.
Sometimes it can do all three within a few hours. Today happens to be one of those days.
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| The TV stations had it all laid out |
Last evening at 10 p.m. it was beginning to snow. The forecast
for southwest suburban Boston was for four to five inches of snow overnight,
changing over to sleet and freezing rain around 4 a.m., and then to all rain at
7 a.m. with a likely accumulation of about an inch of water total.
Though having been born and raised in Florida, I have learned
a few things about winter. One of them is that rain does not melt snow, especially
when the rain falling is about 35 degrees. Instead, the snow becomes
waterlogged. You are essentially shoveling water, which is not an especially healthy
thing to do. And, if you don't shovel it, the waterlogged snow turns to concrete overnight.
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If I waited until the system moved
out, the snow would be waterlogged |
As I watched that forecast, I wondered how much water I would have to shovel if I stayed
inside, snug and warm, and waited until the rain passed? That’s the kind of math
problem I used to enjoy solving back in fifth grade: area (or volume) multiplied by weight.
The area: I have a two-car garage roughly 20 feet wide, and
the depth of the parking/turning area is also about 20 feet. OK, 400 square feet. The driveway is
ten feet wide and 60 feet long. That’s another 600 square feet. Plus, there’s a sidewalk
that’s four feet wide and 50 feet long. Two hundred square feet. Add them up
and you get 1200 square feet as the area to be shoveled.
At this point, you’re wondering to yourself, why isn’t this guy
using a snow blower?
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Good only for light,
powdery snow |
That’s a good question with a complicated answer. I do, in
fact, have a snow blower; and it works. But, for very sound environmental
reasons, I have a crushed stone driveway rather than asphalt. So as not to scoop up and throw
stones from the driveway into the garden, I mounted the maw of the snowblower mounted
on skis. It works wonderfully well on light, powdery snow. It does not work at
all on wet, heavy snow (and neither do most snow blowers going over asphalt).
Back to the math problem. There are two numbers that have
stuck in my head for almost seven decades. The first the mnemonic, “a pint’s a
pound the world around”. The other is that a cubic foot of water weighs 62.4 pounds.
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| The sidewalk |
I could solve the math with the pint/pound thing, but it’s
easier with the cubic foot method. If I have 1200 square feet of driveway and
it was covered to a depth of one foot, I would have 1200 gallons of water which
would weigh 74,880 pounds. But I have one inch, which is one-twelfth of that or
6,240 pounds of water… just over three tons.
Three tons. That is a monumental amount of water to pick up and move one shovelful at a time.
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| It even has a hood! |
I do not want to shovel three tons of water. So, I awakened at
5:30 a.m. and dressed for sleet. Twelve years ago, Betty took me to Niagara
Falls; a place she had been to numerous times as a child. We went in mid-summer and, as a
special treat, we took the Maid of the Mist boat right up to the American
Falls. Because there is lots of spray involved in going to the business end of
a waterfall, your passage on the boat includes a thin plastic rain slicker.
Most people leave them behind; I thought it was a fun memento and brought it
home. Well, this morning I found it and
decided it was the ideal complement to my ratty jeans and duct-taped snow
boots.
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| Down to the stone driveway |
I started at 5:45 a.m.; got the sidewalk and lower part of the
driveway done, then came in and had breakfast, The snow was dense, but not nearly
as heavy as it would be later in the morning. I worked for two hours on the first
shift, then another two shoveling the parking pad. Both sessions involved
either sleet or rain.
I would guess I moved just over a ton of water. That’s pretty
good exercise for a 75-year-old body. Do I want to do it again anytime
soon?
Hell, no.
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