Fifth Grade Math on a Stormy Sunday in February

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.

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.

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? 

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.

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.

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.

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.

Heart Attack Snow

This post was supposed to be titled, ‘Winter Wonderland’. It was envisioned as a full-throated, self-congratulatory, thousand-word essay about being environmentally conscious even as you deal with the reality of snow-swept New England winter landscapes.

Medfield was supposed to be squarely in the 'jackpot zone'

Instead, I’m reduced to distantly remembering I used to gladly pay a dime at my local 7-11 on hot days to slurp a cupful of the stuff I’m now shoveling; except, back then, it was enhanced by a squirt of sickly-sweet fruit syrup.

We had been promised this snow
for three days

You see, we had a nor’easter last evening and today.  The same winter storm (they have names now, this one was Octavia) that drenched California and fouled travel across the Midwest, re-formed itself as a low-pressure system off the East Coast and dumped a foot and a half of snow on unsuspecting Queens.  Octavia then sets its sights on New England.  As late as 5 p.m., as flakes were starting to fall at the Connecticut-Massachusetts border, the National Weather Service still showed Medfield as squarely in the center of the ‘jackpot’ zone of 12” to 18” of snow.

Abigail jumping at snowflakes

I am ready for that kind of a snowfall.  For somebody who did not see snow until he was twenty years old, I have adapted rather well to the notion that precipitation can come frozen.  I topped off the gas in our snow blower, positioned it at the front of the garage door, and settled in for an evening of the kind of satisfied anticipation that comes with being well-prepared.  The snow arrived along with gale-force winds, turning trees into works of art.  Our ten-month-old, Florida-born cat, Abigail, jumped excitedly at the snowflakes falling on the outside of the living room window, unable to comprehend what was going on outside.

At about 9 p.m., Betty tilted her head and said, “that sounds like rain.”

“Nonsense,” I replied, with the confidence of someone who believes an army of forecasters armed with the infallible European Weather Model cannot possibly get things even a little wrong.

But I, too, heard the tinkling sound of raindrops against the windows.  I went to the Weather Channel website and saw the three-hour 'up-until-now' loop of solid snow overwhelming southern New England; getting darker blue by the second.  But I also saw something disturbing: the rain-snow line that was supposed to be solidly anchored on Cape Cod was, instead, stealthily advancing ever further into the mainland.

I tapped the ‘future’ button.  Sure enough, we were turning green. The loop showed Medfield had nothing but rain in its future. Somewhere, 30,000 feet over our heads, the gremlins controlling the storm's steering currents had decided to have a joke at my expense. Except, to me, it wasn’t going to be one bit funny.

No asphalt, just a stone driveway

At this point, you are probably wondering to yourself, What’s the big deal? Be happy it isn’t all that snow!

The first problem is, our property isn’t equipped to deal with wet, heavy snow.

Six years ago, when we were planning our ‘dream retirement house’, we went all-in on creating a home that would be one with nature.  No grass lawn, no invasive plants or trees, and nothing that would cause excess water to roll off our property and into the town’s storm drains. To meet that last requirement, we eschewed the idea of your standard asphalt driveway in favor of one made of crushed stone, held in place by decorative granite curbing. Rain water, rather than rolling down the gentle slope of the driveway to the street, would instead pass through the stone and soak into the subsoil, recharging the reservoir of moisture for our garden.

I mounted our snow 
blower on skis

And, if it snowed, I was ready: I retro-fitted a pair of Rossignol skis onto our hardy snow blower so the maw of the machine coasted half an inch above the driveway and sidewalk surface.  It is, if I can allow myself a moment of immodesty, a stroke of genius. I may even patent it one of these days.

The second problem is, there hasn’t been a snow blower made that can deal with water-soaked snow.  Put any model out on a driveway, fire it up, and watch as the icy residue dribbles out of the blower like an 18-month-old disgorging unwanted Gerber’s Squash Delight. 

An asphalt driveway can be
scraped clean in minutes

A homeowner with an asphalt driveway can pick up the phone, call some Guy with a Snow Plow on His Pickup Truck, and pay whatever extortion is demanded. I don’t have that option: a conventional snow plow will simply take off a cubic yard or two of crushed stone along with the snow, and deposit it either out on the street or in our perennial beds. (And don’t give me that ‘Oh, the snow plow operator can keep the blade up a couple of inches’ stuff. The Guy with a Snow Plow on His Pickup Truck has a laser-like focus on the goal of being in and out of your driveway in three minutes, with his pockets stuffed with enough cash to take the family to Disney World.)

The snow was water-soaked

This morning at 6:30 a.m., I went outside in drizzling rain to survey the scene.  The gremlins controlling the steering currents were slapping their knees with laughter.  While safely-inland Wilmington, Massachusetts recorded twenty inches of white, powdery snow; Medfield had six inches of snow permeated with at least an inch of water.  

A gift from the town

And, of course, down at the intersection of the driveway and the street, the Medfield Highway Department had thoughtfully deposited a ten-foot-wide, three-foot deep, and two-foot-high plug of pure ice. All of it had to be moved... by hand.

We call it ‘heart attack snow’.  Every shovelful weighs about thirty pounds. You move it for an hour and then your right arm goes numb. Cue the EMTs.

Betty took the sidewalk and an area immediately in front of the garage.  I first removed the plug of ice and then started up the 90-foot-long driveway, being careful to leave a skim of ice/snow on top of the

The finished driveway, a crust of snow

crushed rock. Two hours later, we had a clean sidewalk and a wide-enough passage that we can get our cars out into the world if needed.

As Kermit the Frog once reminded us, ‘It isn’t easy being green’. 

I would add it is definitely hard work sometimes.  And maybe even good exercise.