Saturday, January 15, 2011

Snowplows and Salt Spreaders (NYC) January 2011

Nothing heavy in the post. It's sort-of a wrap up on the snow-fall that took out 2010 and ushered in 2011 (and the mess that Bloomy made. of the snow-clearance)

First some pictures and short videos clips  that were left-over from January 1, 2011; the tail-end of the 20 inches of the bizzard "clean-up"...

New Years Day, 2011. I was out for a stroll in mid-town and happened to observe the first snow-plow with SALT that I'd seen since the snow began falling on the 26th of December. I had seen a few sanitation truck/snow plows, but no salt-spreaders so this was a 'wow' moment (I thought).

Then I noticed the ridges of snow that were filling the center of the street, not clearing it (pushed by the plow from the curb into the street) Curious, I started following the plow...following it's ridges actually about. And now the cars seemed to be moving a bit slower while they weaved around those ridges.

Guess one-snow can't do what teams of snow-plows do, clear the streets with one plow following after another. Maybe one snow-plow is it better than no-plow? Maybe...but watching it make a mess of the street and the intersections.... I'm NOT so sure..... 





Then, after the whopping 9"inch snow-fall two weeks later, there was a very DIFFERENT reaction from Bloomy and his team. But, snow 'clearance' .... I thought it a bit odd, throwing the snow into the street rather than clearing it.

January 13,  2011, the first snow-fall of 2011.  I went for a walk in Times Square to see what's up. We were still dealing with the snow and garbage that hadn't been picked up from New Years. But,when it came to this snow-fall and snow-clearance.... Bloomberg's minions were going to be seen this time, everywhere, even if there was nothing for them to do.
Found a truck filled with salt and a snow-plow digger just sitting. Guess there wasn't much for them to do once the GLOBS of salt had been spread all over the pavement.  I don't think I've ever seen that much salt spread that thick after a light snow-fall.

Not much action in Times Square, so I walked over to Port Authority. Noticed a large team of sanitation crewmen clearing a bus stop. Okay. Makes sense. But, this seemed as odd as the snow-plow ridges I had observed two weeks before. These guys were shoveling the snow from the curb into the street, weaving around the traffic. Kind-of felt like someone was sweeping dust under the rug.

Am I missing something? Or is the Mad-hatter of Bloomberg losing it?



Hope that's it for snow-reports for quite a while. I am "moving on".

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