Thursday, January 27, 2011

Harvesting snow

in all earnest i told a friend in Nice where its quite a bit warmer than here, and no snow, that the excess of snow is currently brought to "snow farms". snow farms?! so, they are now even harvesting snow?!! up till now, more than 50 inches (127 cm) of snow has fallen totally, and last night's storm added another 12 inches.... of course i was again sleepless and watched the snow falling every now and then during the night. by now, so much snow has fallen, it barely fits along the sidewalks, and thus they started to bring excess snow to "snow farms" (while driving we already noticed the roads became quite a bit narrower; especially with a large real american truck...). snow farms are empty fields, parking lots and playgrounds where the snow can be stacked up high (so high that it might not thaw until spring!!). the metro newspaper tells me that boston has 6 snow farms. my plan for the weekend; find one of those and climb the mountains..... :D
above another picture from the window of our apartment this morning, before they had time to clear the path.... doesnt it look pretty? im sure the person walking there took great care to create prefect tracks...

5 comments:

Tim said...

very dreamy!! you would not think that on the other side of the fence there is a stream, and on the other side of the stream there is a walking path, and on the other side of the walking path, there is a road, and on the other side of the road, there is the commuter rail...

biebkriebels said...

Lovely picture! Never heard of the snow farms, it is a clever solution for all the snow. Could be usefull in the Netherlands (when they ever would decide to clean the roads)

CaT said...

ah, yes, i forgot to mention that the city of boston has this year 16 million (!!!) dollar to spend on snow removal... and im sure they will use it all.... that does not even involve all the private snow removing (either by house owners or by the apartment complex, as is the case at out apartment; we dont do anything and the roads are perfectly cleared (the rent is high, however... :) )

Stefan Jansson said...

We have a snow farm not far from the old tree, it was funny to see how they cleared the ground from all the snow so that they could later dump more snow there!

CaT said...

yes, thats what they did here as well..
this morning some sidewalks were freed of snow. and this evening...... it was all packed again..