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✨Pittsburgh PA ❄ Winter 2018-2019


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1 hour ago, Burghblizz said:

Very impactful 2-3” overall....timing and temps wreaking havoc

I left the house at 4:30am this morning, figured I'd just come to work early, roads were starting to get a bit dicey even then but the light traffic at that hour made it pretty easy to get in. Wife said school went from 2hr delay to closed, and Tarentum Bridge was closed or had limited travel.

Timing aside.. temps are the big factor here, when is the last time we had a snow event (not LES, but synoptic) with temps in the single digits and the previous days temps hovering in the low teens to single digits? This is like an Northern Maine or Midwest type snow. I know there is always the debate about can snow accumulate on warm ground and we know it can, but much better the other way around.

I love these types of events, no worry of will it be to warm at the surface, will the warm tongue turn us to rain.. just pure snow and every flake counts. I'd kill for this type of setup only with a much bigger storm like 6-12 or more and then stay cold for a few days after to enjoy it with maybe some snow on snow light events to follow.

For now I'll just enjoy it.. while I "Whistle through the Graveyard" ignoring the big warmup on tap. (Which hopefully will be short lived).

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18 minutes ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

I left the house at 4:30am this morning, figured I'd just come to work early, roads were starting to get a bit dicey even then but the light traffic at that hour made it pretty easy to get in. Wife said school went from 2hr delay to closed, and Tarentum Bridge was closed or had limited travel.

Timing aside.. temps are the big factor here, when is the last time we had a snow event (not LES, but synoptic) with temps in the single digits and the previous days temps hovering in the low teens to single digits? This is like an Northern Maine or Midwest type snow. I know there is always the debate about can snow accumulate on warm ground and we know it can, but much better the other way around.

I love these types of events, no worry of will it be to warm at the surface, will the warm tongue turn us to rain.. just pure snow and every flake counts. I'd kill for this type of setup only with a much bigger storm like 6-12 or more and then stay cold for a few days after to enjoy it with maybe some snow on snow light events to follow.

For now I'll just enjoy it.. while I "Whistle through the Graveyard" ignoring the big warmup on tap. (Which hopefully will be short lived).

Lots of folks on Reddit complaining about the poor road conditions and not enough being done, and it’s frustrating having to explain when it is 8 degrees you can’t really do anything to melt snow.

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Lots of folks on Reddit complaining about the poor road conditions and not enough being done, and it’s frustrating having to explain when it is 8 degrees you can’t really do anything to melt snow.

Yea people just don’t get that. Takes a lot of salt to melt the snow when it’s this cold. I don’t remember the exact science, but I’m pretty sure that a brine solution of 50/50 water and salt, lowers the melting point down to 0°. Takes a lot of salt to get to a 50/50 solution.


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16 minutes ago, MikeB_01 said:


Yea people just don’t get that. Takes a lot of salt to melt the snow when it’s this cold. I don’t remember the exact science, but I’m pretty sure that a brine solution of 50/50 water and salt, lowers the melting point down to 0°. Takes a lot of salt to get to a 50/50 solution.

Yeah really the only other thing that can be done is to spray the salt with calcium chloride, that creates a nice feedback, the calcium absorbs moisture out of the air that then starts an exothermic reaction further lowering the freezing point and enhances the rock salts ability to melt. It's significantly more expensive though so not sure how much municipalities especially smaller ones can utilize it on large scale road treatments.

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It's not too surprising this event was so impactful despite the little amount of snow.  Extreme cold prior to snowfall meant the road surfaces were highly receptive to instant icing, along with the other issue of salt not being effective.  People that didn't have to be out this morning should have just stayed home.  I find some workplace policies on these issues frustrating.  Good thing schools recognized the issues and cancelled.

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1 minute ago, jwilson said:

It's not too surprising this event was so impactful despite the little amount of snow.  Extreme cold prior to snowfall meant the road surfaces were highly receptive to instant icing, along with the other issue of salt not being effective.  People that didn't have to be out this morning should have just stayed home.  I find some workplace policies on these issues frustrating.  Good thing schools recognized the issues and cancelled.

I honestly don’t know what the answer is on this one. I don’t want the government telling businesses they have to close, but at the same time, if a businessl like Walmart is going to force people into work in cases like this I think there needs to be some oversight.

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32 minutes ago, KPITSnow said:

I honestly don’t know what the answer is on this one. I don’t want the government telling businesses they have to close, but at the same time, if a businessl like Walmart is going to force people into work in cases like this I think there needs to be some oversight.

Yeah I agree, last thing we need is more government oversight. It's really a tough thing to try and mandate. I'm lucky enough to have a flexible situation, if I feel the weather is to bad I can just use my time off and stay home or make it up other days. Obviously that doesn't fly for shift type work in retail etc.

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41 minutes ago, RitualOfTheTrout said:

Yeah I agree, last thing we need is more government oversight. It's really a tough thing to try and mandate. I'm lucky enough to have a flexible situation, if I feel the weather is to bad I can just use my time off and stay home or make it up other days. Obviously that doesn't fly for shift type work in retail etc.

The question we have to ask..is it really needed that Best Buy, McDonald’s, or a bank be open this morning? 

 

I know we dont want more oversight, but on the other hand if companies aren’t willing to self police what do you do. I remember I worked best buy during the feb 5-6 2010 event...the store was open feb 6th. That is a problem IMO.

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HR walked by, I mentioned it took 2 hrs to get to work:

HR:  Why didn't you work from home?

Me: I thought that was frowned upon. Don't you agree that [boss] believes if you aren't in your office, you aren't actually working?

HR:  Yes, that's true

Me:  Well, that's why I came to work.

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2 hours ago, KPITSnow said:

I honestly don’t know what the answer is on this one. I don’t want the government telling businesses they have to close, but at the same time, if a business like Walmart is going to force people into work in cases like this I think there needs to be some oversight.

Apologies as I know this is off-topic, but I wasn't even necessarily referring to government intervention.  Obviously this varies quite a bit from company to company, and some jobs require showing up regardless of circumstances (medical, police, fire), but I think there are plenty of private companies that expect people to show up even if the world was ending tomorrow.  I won't expound much on this as I know this isn't the place, but my main issue is: management needs a bit more compassion and understanding and less rigid employee manipulation.

Ideally changes would come from within institutions and wouldn't require external compulsion.  CWC illustrates my point exactly, though.

As for the snow itself, I think this was definitely an over-performer for the southern areas.  This is the rare instance it would have been better to be back in Morgantown, but I think places in and around Pittsburgh got pretty much what we expected in the order of 1-3" all around.

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2 hours ago, jwilson said:

Apologies as I know this is off-topic, but I wasn't even necessarily referring to government intervention.  Obviously this varies quite a bit from company to company, and some jobs require showing up regardless of circumstances (medical, police, fire), but I think there are plenty of private companies that expect people to show up even if the world was ending tomorrow.  I won't expound much on this as I know this isn't the place, but my main issue is: management needs a bit more compassion and understanding and less rigid employee manipulation.

Ideally changes would come from within institutions and wouldn't require external compulsion.  CWC illustrates my point exactly, though.

As for the snow itself, I think this was definitely an over-performer for the southern areas.  This is the rare instance it would have been better to be back in Morgantown, but I think places in and around Pittsburgh got pretty much what we expected in the order of 1-3" all around.

Last word on this, without getting too deep into a political discussion...I think we all know most corporations aren’t acting with their employees interests first in most situations. I’m not sure what the answer is on any issue without outside regulation.

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