xela | snow + rain = suck

I like snow. I rather like rain too. But together they can bite me.

I had the option to stay home yesterday and enjoy the weather as a series of views out my window. So I did. Unfortunately the option did not extend to today. So this morning found me outside prying a three-inch-thick armour coat off of my car. I understand that that if it rains on top of snow, snow can act like a sponge. A sponge which, if it then freezes again, rather resembles a brick. Living around Boston, I've encountered the phenomenon before, most notably one winter when I stepped out to find an inch-thick hard shell atop a foot of still fairly fluffy snow, into which one of my feet would plunge every few steps. But this morning's was special, easily the thickest snow crust I've ever seen: it was crust all the way through. You could have used this stuff for structures — it was like foamed concrete, only heavier.

Once I'd carved some of this stuff off my windshield, I realized it would be seriously uncivil to drive down the road with chunks of this stuff flying off my car, so I proceeded to carve it off not just the windshield and rear window, but the hood and roof too. (I didn't get the part of the roof between the bars of the roof-rack, but (1) I figured it wasn't going anywhere, and (2) I'd broken my ice scraper by then.)

When I got home I grabbed a snow brick off the driveway, roughly 100cm² by however thick, brought it in, melted it, and measured the volume of the water in it: 300ml. So this stuff weighed 30 kg/m². Figure the footprint of my car as roughly 1.5 x 4m (probably narrower, but also probably longer; it comes out in the wash). So I probably carved 150kg of snow-brick off my car this morning. No wonder my ice scraper died.