Snowmageddon
In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last week you’ve probably heard that the East Coast of the US has had some snow. The fervor of the media attention has been comparable with the chance of a dusting in London. We have had about 2 ft so the panic is perhaps a little more justified. In contrast this is considered normal in places such as the mid-west so why is it an issue for the D.C./Baltimore region.
Like most things I suppose it all comes down to risk as the area doesn’t get snow in these quantities it is not as prepared for the volume as other areas. Looking from a Facilities Management/Design Planning perspective I note a couple of things. We design drainage for 100 year rain events but also should think of the snow equivalent:
- Where to put it. Snow takes up quite a lot of space. You can compress it, but only so far. So what? In our condo there are, or should I say were, some outside parking spaces for visitors. Large grass verges have also been optimized, alongside peoples’ front gardens; any grass area is now a snow store. Also side walks, clearly Americans don’t walk so they are considered fair game.
- How to move it. Shoveling 2ft deep snow out of a driveway manually must be hard work; I can see why people died. Snow blowers are awesome for pathways and you could probably do a short road with determination and planning. Snow ploughs are a given. But the rate limiting step seems to be wheeled loading shovels or skid steer loaders. These have the capability of both heaping the snow higher and of moving it around in a more deliberate fashion than just pushing it to the end of a run. In the middle of the city dump trucks have been used to transport snow out of the narrow residential streets.
- Don’t wait for the end. 2ft of snow is difficult to manage, far easier is 1ft of snow twice. This keeps essential lines of communication open, gets everything open quicker and means that smaller equipment isn’t overwhelmed, therefore a broader range of equipment is useful.
- Drainage plans; three things on this.
- Firstly, knowing where the drains are so that they can be cleared to allow the snow melt in, by either marking them with wands, having a site plan of them or both.
- Secondly, putting drains, close to but not in the middle of the forecast snow collection areas. Close to so that there is not a long stream of water to freeze overnight, but not underneath so water can actually get down the drains. This hasn’t been done so well where I live.
- Finally, and another one that isn’t so great in our condo, is making sure there is actually a fall to a drain. I’ll leave that one as it is.
- Finally communication seems to be pretty key. I could talk about American authoritarianism but I would be descending down a slippery slope towards ranting there.
Obviously the whole experience has been harrowing being locked in with only the TMR 4 deadline for company and in no way did we get any skiing or any fun in at all.
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Henry, a really interesting and reflective blog. I wonder whether we can draw any observations for the relevance to future operations, or perhaps recall lessons, for those of you who are old enough, from the Bosnia days?
CI
Henry, I would argue that despite the East coast not perhaps being as efficient as the other areas within the US it has/is doing a pretty good job at functioning. I am not convinced land lines of communication in the UK would be running a couple of days after a 2ft snow storm. I understood the underground was up and running a day or so later.
To expand on your thoughts into a look at the effect on structures, the issue faced by most is not actually the snow, even 2ft of it, it would be the thawing into slush and then freezing in areas it has not drained (flat roofs, portal frames of “W” shape, etc). Further snow storms doing the same thing creating more of an accumulation of ice can then cause problems. So as useful as it is to clear pathways and roads, if the cold spell is likely to continue there may be a few structures at risk too (assuming this storm was above typical snow design levels).
Back onto the solutions to remove the snow. Although disruption to people/goods moving about it is always difficult to quantify it is likely to be highly expensive. Therefore a solution perhaps could be an expensive one in terms of capital cost if it was easily off-set by allowing a major city to return to full operating capacity more quickly. Perhaps a method of under pitch heating, or similar technology could be used in the key areas, either under roads or on the grasslands the snow was going to be stored on to enable it to be got rid of by melting more quickly.
Either way Tian Tian seemed to enjoy the snow so clearly he was a winner.
On an opposite note of snow falling, we had a talk recently from Tim Jarvis (environmentalist/ activist) who is attempting to climb the 25 highest mountains at zero latitude which still have a glacier on because it is predicted that in 25 year’s time they will have all melted. A pretty scary statistic and one chosen to get a response from the COP 21 summit and the wider public. Not so related to your 2ft of snow predicament, but I wonder if global warming effects might cause more extreme weather at greater frequency which might need some serious re-think of a 100-year design event.
Damo,
After hearing you have been to a talk about glacial retreat I am appalled to hear that you are talking about heating the snow! Incidentally for areas in Baltimore city this seems to be exactly what is being done using a ‘snow dragon’. The concept is essentially dumping snow into a heater and then allowing the water to flow into the Harbour. A more sensible alternative in the city would appear to be dumping the snow into the Harbour.
I steered away from talking about structures as it is outside of my zone of competence, but I agree that the issue is not the initial snow event but the subsequent prevailing weather, both in terms of future snow events and the freeze thaw cycles. Further North what is done about this tends to be a combination of making the structure stronger and optimising roof pitch to allow the snow to fall off. This also requires the suitable design of exits to ensure people aren’t hit by falling debris.
In terms of offering other solutions to snow build up in latitudes where it would not normally be expected. I disagree that economically you could justify an expensive capital solution to solve this because looking at it as an insurance risk, although the severity is high the likelihood is low bringing it down the scale somewhat. Therefore something like a specifically designed heating coil under a roof (if that was what you had in mind) would be unlikely to be justifiable. That said, at the point of panic and desperation perhaps expensive to run ‘field solutions’ could be implemented at the time of need; perhaps something manpower intensive using available resources. In a domestic environment this might mean going into your loft, rolling back the insulation and cranking the heating up? Or using a cherry picker to access roofs and scrape snow off perhaps?
Interesting that you mention 1-X year events Damo, we were talking (briefly) about this on Friday. USACE has moved away from designing and assessing based on 1 in X year events for that very reason. It now does risk assessments instead. As an example, and the one we were using, take a levee at risk from being overtopped. Previously this may have been designed for 1 in 100 years, as you say. And with changing trends, more data etc what was once a 1 in 100 year event may now be classed in a one in 50 year. This would make the levee non-compliant with its original specs. However instead of simply re-engineering the levee to make it compliant with a (new) 1 in 100 year event it would be inspected based on risks and impacts. i.e. If the levee is in the middle of nowhere and actually the only thing that will be impacted if it were to overtop is a few convenience stores and a tavern then probably nothing will be done. If, however, there has been mass infrastructure development since the levee was built then it might be in with a shout of getting some attention.
I actually wonder how much data is being used to determine a 1 in 100 year event. for example over here the earliest recorded and written data can’t be more than 400 years old at best. So its not a massive data set to be statistically relevant from even before trying to correct for climate change?