So on my way home the news was saying how your snow farms are overwhelmed!! Well there is your problem right there, why are y'all growing snow?? Clearly you don't need so much, send some this way.
Seriously though, what is a snow farm?
Maria, thanks, would suck if people were growing the stuff out there
So y'all have given up dumping tea for snow. I just can't imagine. My husband won't believe me that we do not remove snow from our city, we just give up one lane. Of course god help the fool that parks on the lane they plow.
Well, I don't live in Boston, but I think "snow farms" became the term the city uses for the vacant lots where they dump the snow they plow off the streets.
:)
LOL glad you're on the case! As mentioned, they are places where the cities and towns put excess snow. In the suburbs, the plows just push the snow onto residential property and in parking lots, they just build giant hills (my kids were sledding down those "hills" at their school yesterday). But in Boston and other tightly-packed cities where people rely on being able to walk, use public transportation and need on-street parking, they have front-end loaders and open-top tractor-trailers and dump trucks that go through and scoop the snow up into the trucks and physically remove it. At the farms, they actually are using heated bins that melt the snow - the trucks dump it into the bins and then it just flows out the bottom as water. They've also been shipping snow to beaches.
The biggest farm is a large, out of the way parking lot in an area that hasn't been developed yet. Others are at places that are closed for the season, like the zoo, beaches and golf courses.
The next step after the "farms" fill up is to start dumping snow in Boston Harbor but the city needs permission from the environmental department to do so due to environmental factors.
This is getting interesting to say the least. The entire rail system was shut down at 7 PM tonight and will remain shut down all day tomorrow, which will prevent many people from getting to work. They are running limited bus service but a lot of people who work in the city's hospitals use public transportation to get to work so I'm sure they're in a staffing nightmare right now. I used to manage a food court at Boston University and all of our full-time staff - hundreds of employees - relied on public transportation to get to work. There are still almost 10,000 students and staff who live on campus who need to be fed, and that's just one school. For an event like this when I was there, basically all managers slept at the University and we called in every student employee who wanted to work and paid them OT to keep a skeleton crew going.
As much as another snow day (yes, that's #6 in the past 12 week days) kills me, at least I don't have to go anywhere and can work from my house. I feel bad for people who have to find a way to get to work or who are trapped home with small kids driving them crazy all day.
lol...
a snow farm here in Massachusetts is a place where we dump snow to get it out of the way and then they got melters to melt what gets dumped in order to dump some more snow to make room in our cities and towns...for yet MORE snow, which gets trucked over to the place (aka snow farm)...
I do hope I made sense
Yes, it is an odd name
LOL
Careful, though - next thing ya know, the snow farmers will be asking the government for subsidies to NOT farm snow, since there's a surplus!
But if they could figure out a way to ship that surplus to states that are suffering long-term drought conditions, wouldn't that be a win-win?
;-)
LOL, J.!
Waiting with bated breath for the answer, JB!
To think....if a snow farm is only in business for roughly 4 months a year, what do they do the other 8 months? Make enough money to sit on the a$$? Interesting...
J., there's a shorter growing season in the northeast so we have to find something that does well in the colder climate!
I just sara on the news that there are some enterprising people who are collecting al those discarded plastic water bottles, filling them with snow, labeling it "Boston Blizzard" and that sort of thing, and selling them for $12.99 to those who really want some of our Massachusetts snow! Not sure who's buying, but if they're willing to part with $12.99, I suppose the free market can take care of them.
And JB is right - there are issues about dumping snow in the harbor - mostly because of the salt & sand content I think.
Years ago, after the Blizzard of '78, snow was trucked to some vacant lot in South Boston and put into a huge pile. Of course it froze solid, then more snow was added which then froze, and so on and so on. I think it was dubbed "Mount Southie" (because South Boston is known locally as "Southie"). One of the radio stations ran a contest for people to guess the date when the last vestige would melt and disappear. I think the winning date was something like June 2nd. Ridiculous.
And on your SWH - yes giving up a lane might work in some places, but actually Boston is such an old city in many sections with lots of narrow and winding streets, there's just no room for a lane plus a parking area plus the snowbanks. I don't know what they do in your city, but in Boston, when people shovel out a parking spot for their car, they "reserve" it with things like old beach chairs, kitchen chairs, milk crates & beat up road cones. God help the person who parks in the spot saved by someone else!
learn something every day.
