I thought about writing this type of post ages ago, and then thought “no way ugh” and then last Sunday’s absolute deluge compelled me to write something. I was actually happy to have such a big storm, because the snow hasn’t been this deep in years.

The 2012 photo I’ve had in prep for YEARS (the wall to the right is much more viney now; the row of box hedge moved)
The wind row (snowbank made by a plow) at the street

The above two pics and the header might not be the last time we had snowbanks 3 feet deep (but they might). I kept these from a 2012 post I’ve since deleted, when I blurbed about a big storm. We must have had one more big-snow winter since then, but it really is that rare.

Here’s what this year’s storms (two in the space of a week) left on everybody’s doorstep:

A salt/grit truck, taking a break

Please don’t add to the street clearing problem

When I first moved in here, the borough sent a letter to everyone – never to be repeated, which surprises me – to shovel your snow onto your own property. That is, kindly, don’t shovel it onto the street for the Ville to pick up. That’s making your problem everyone else’s problem. I think that’s more than fair. “My little bit” multiplied by every single address is not a “little bit.” Snow removal is a huge logistical endeavour and expense. It needs to happen quickly. Volume reduces speed, and so does availability of equipment and workers. Retaining that extra snow on your own property requires the minor inconvenience of thinking about where to put it, and then just following through.

When your shovelling hits the public sidewalk, that becomes part of what the city removes – so heap up what you need to get your car into and out of its parking spot. I saw a guy with a snowblower sending it out into traffic rather than back on his own property or into the banks at the side of the road. Thanks, guy!

It’s now been a week since the big storm, and there are lots of places –especially downtown, I was surprised – where the sidewalk has been tramped down by feet rather than cleared by sidewalk plow. (They must have run out of budget and workers.) I heard whiny, able-bodied people complaining not out of actual inconvenience, but because they want a perfect world where they don’t get to see the work it takes. Personally, I enjoy some of those walking tracks, but not all. There are encumbrances. Foot-traffic alone doesn’t do the job, and those who are mobility-impaired have to wait even longer before they can get about freely. So in advance of snow removal, I think packing the sidewalks down by snowmobile might be a good alternative.

Keep your local sewer grate clear!

Don’t pile the snow up right over top the sewer grate, dammit! Early in the season, I called my neighbour’s snow removal company to instruct them to stop doing that. It’s the only sewer grate on our block, and buddy with his tractor was putting the snow on top, and that means as snow melts on the street, there’s no place for the water to go. And that means I’m the one to march out there and de-block the sewer grate and give the puddles and lakes a chance to drain before we have another freeze. How many other folks do that? Oh, no one…but a few farmer/fixer types. Because it’s an easy job if you have ten minutes and a shovel.

Where to put the snow instead – and how you benefit

So if you’re like “But I don’t have a yard to put the snow” — it may be a few steps away, but you do. Buildings have setbacks from the street, with a short walkway to the entrance, with a raised porch or not. Take a good look around your building: you’ll see a good snowbank at the property line, but right against your building and under the porch or balconies, the snow cover will be thin. This is because of the shade of the balcony and the eaves overhead, and because the heat of the basement keeps the ground at perimeter a few degrees warmer than the rest. That’s where you can toss the snow. Where it’s warm enough to melt and percolate, the French drains will carry it away. Where it isn’t, the snow is providing added insulation to your dwelling.

Which is why, when I shovel my walkway, I toss the snow against the garage door. It builds a bank against the garage door, and this provides a layer of insulation to the inside of my garage. If any warm air escapes, it can create an ice rim at the base to reinforce the seal. My only job there, if I open the garage door, is to sweep out the line where the door gasket meets the floor. Whatever snow gets into my garage at these times quickly melts and goes down the drain in the garage floor.

Leaving a surfeit of snow on your own property is good for the yard; it protects the plants and percolates downward in the spring, leaving a few extra days (maybe even weeks) of moisture for your grass, trees, and flowers.

And that’s precisely why we should welcome these huge deluges of snow even though they’re super inconvenient for us in the short term (especially if the borough is inefficient at removing it from the streets and sidewalks). Outside the city, out in the forests, all across farmland, that extra charge of snow bodes very well for the watersheds and the replenishment of aquifers. The more snow there is, the longer it lasts, the better off the forests will be. We’ve had a few very big years of forest fires, 2023 especially, because everything has been hotter and drier. This kind of weather is the antidote to drought.

A Screed on Salt and its Overuse

Salt is a major pollutant. It is toxic to us, it’s toxic to other living things. Wherever salt infiltrates soil, it ruins the soil permanently for growth of anything except halophytic plants (of which we have few). This is how the Middle East went from being the Fertile Crescent to a desert, from which only few pockets have been reclaimed. They dug canals using brackish (salty) water for irrigation, and this slowly toxified out the crops. Without green ground cover and a proper freshwater watershed, the land desertified.

Salt is also a limiting nutrient in the wild. We do need trace amounts of salt, especially iodized salt (natural or amended). Large herbivores seek out salt for their diet, so when country roads and highways are salted, that brings the deer and moose to the ditches at the side of the road to get their delicious salt fix. Unfortunately, this can also kill them – in collisions with us in our vehicles. And some of us are killed in turn.

Our over-reliance on salt for road safety has been altering the salinity of freshwater as it travels through the watersheds. What happened in the Middle East can eventually happen here. But well before it happens for us, it’s already proving difficult for freshwater species, from plants to shellfish to frogs.

While I trust some regional governments are paying attention to salt pollution and its overuse, at least from a cost-benefit perspective, your average security dude who throws the salt down where the public walks doesn’t know better (ditto, his boss).

(People don’t know anything about anything unless they’re required to take a course, are given the rationale for instructions, or are keen enough to pay attention to what works. Most people, most of the time, are happy to go along on assumptions that may not be correct. It’s all about impression management!)

I’ve consistently seen people using five to even ten times the amount of salt that’s needed for the job. Salt is also corrosive to metal, concrete, and other finished surfaces. It’s kind of flabbergasting to see this – and this isn’t the worst I’ve seen:

That’s the ice bucket with literally a full cup of salt scattered immediately around it.
An abundance of salt scattered everywhere. The white traces : pre-existing salt stains.
And it’s so unnecessary: the ground surface is already textured, which may even be prior damage from salt corrosion.

You do not need to melt snow with salt. You do not need to melt snow. You only need to break up ice so that it isn’t a slip hazard.

A slick of ice on a set of stairs is a hazard. That’s what you have to be vigilant about. If you’ve shovelled the path and ensured that there’s no ice-slick on one of those melty-freezy days, you’ve done your job. Only put the salt where the slick would occur (and when the ice breaks up, clear it)! Casting salt about like a welcome mat is literally toxic. So I avoid it as much as possible, and it really has not been a hardship. More people should try it.

I’ve been using the same 2 kg jug of Alaskan Ice Melter for the past more-than-five years. I amended it the year before last by sweeping up leftover sidewalk cinders and mixing them in with the salt for grit. I use only a thin scattering, about a quarter to a third of a cup, on a single-wide half-flight of steps (5 treads to the landing). Any more than that isn’t “an abundance of caution,” it’s excess. In other words, showing off. Which people definitely do.

If it helps — and it literally does! — you can buy rubber treads for your outdoor stairs at any large building supply store. I use these rubber treads on my front steps, but they really come in handy on my back steps, which are wood and metal, so a little slippery even without any ice present.

Please stop salting the crap out of everything. My boots (which I have to clean every week!) and the fish and frogs and mussels and aquatic and riparian plants thank you.

And on that note, I must mention that Windsor Salt got its name from the salt mine under the whole region. Read about the Detroit salt mines here. I would love to have visited them, and many in our parents’ and elder siblings’ generations did. You can watch a recent tour of Windsor Salt Mine here.

In a related article forecasting what long-term climate change will do for the salt mining industry, at least there’s a clear statement that “water quality will improve.”