Our Trips and Life Experiences: Salt and Sand in the Snowstorm

The winter time has started yesterday, Sunday December 21 with a snowstorm since Friday 19 until Sunday in the midnight. You can imagine how big is the snow around here!. In Maine state the snow altitude is 41 inches meanwhile New Hampshire 18 right now.

It is a problem in the streets. There are many trucks plowing the snow. Several bussines and schools have closed their activities due to the weather.

In theory, using salt in the roads tends to dicrease the peak frost of the water where it is disolved until -16ºC depending of the salt concentration dissolved in water. In the real life, the normal salt can decrease the frost temperature until -9 ºC -10 ºC. That is why many roads are spreaded with salt before and in the time of the snowfall to avoid layer of ice and snow. The sand is good to avoid slides, it works to reinforce the roads.

Under many snow and ice conditions, the use of deicing chemicals has became necessary to maintain clear pavements. In the United States, the use of road salt has paralelled in the size and importance of the nation’s highway system. Before the 1940s, highway departments relied mostly on plowing and abrasives like sand and cinders to keep roadways open after winter storms. Salt was used primarily as an additive to prevent freezing of sandpiles. During the winter of 1941–1942, New Hampshire became the first state to adopt a general policy of using salt.

Sunday, Dec 21, 2008-Some cars were buried by the snow.

One of the problems is during snow melt, peak chloride concentrations in some urban streams can approach half that of ocean water, far higher than many freshwater organisms can tolerate even for a short period. Chloride levels high enough to impair aquatic plants and animals may persist through the summer. This happens because some dissolved road salt infiltrates into groundwater, which then seeps slowly into streams, contaminating them long after the snow has melted. Also the soil absorbs this solution causing damage to the trees along the roads.