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White Flaky Residue After Snow Melts


Dano62
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New to the forum.  I'm 62 years old, have lived in Maine my entire life, and have never seen what I describe following.  We live off a paved private road.  The road gets plowed during/after snow storms and no salt (or equivalent) is used on the road.  We've never used any type of salt/snow melt on our paved driveway, or anywhere on our property.  Last winter, and this winter, after I have cleaned off our vehicles with a shop type floor broom, and have snowblowed our walkway/upper driveway, I put them away in our garage.  After the remaining snow melts off of them, and the water evaporates, there is a flaky white residue left where the snow melted.  It has to be something that binds to the snow flakes as they fall, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.  Any ideas?  Maybe I don't want to know!

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7 hours ago, Dano62 said:

New to the forum.  I'm 62 years old, have lived in Maine my entire life, and have never seen what I describe following.  We live off a paved private road.  The road gets plowed during/after snow storms and no salt (or equivalent) is used on the road.  We've never used any type of salt/snow melt on our paved driveway, or anywhere on our property.  Last winter, and this winter, after I have cleaned off our vehicles with a shop type floor broom, and have snowblowed our walkway/upper driveway, I put them away in our garage.  After the remaining snow melts off of them, and the water evaporates, there is a flaky white residue left where the snow melted.  It has to be something that binds to the snow flakes as they fall, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is.  Any ideas?  Maybe I don't want to know!

It is salt,  ocean salt can create condensation nuclei which snowflakes form around. 

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1 hour ago, Ginx snewx said:

It is salt,  ocean salt can create condensation nuclei which snowflakes form around. 

It does look like salt.  We're exactly 20 miles inland from the ocean and 750' above sea level, which I suppose in the big scheme of things isn't that far, or too high in elevation.  The funny thing is, these are my first two winters living inland.  The rest of my life was spent living less than 2 miles from the ocean, and I never saw this before.  Maybe I'll put some on my finger and touch it with my tongue.  Will let you know the results of my unscientific test.

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4 hours ago, Dano62 said:

It does look like salt.  We're exactly 20 miles inland from the ocean and 750' above sea level, which I suppose in the big scheme of things isn't that far, or too high in elevation.  The funny thing is, these are my first two winters living inland.  The rest of my life was spent living less than 2 miles from the ocean, and I never saw this before.  Maybe I'll put some on my finger and touch it with my tongue.  Will let you know the results of my unscientific test.

Yea with all these long fetch easterly and South easterly winds salt is uplifted easily 20 miles. Boston area is famous for salt nuclei adding to snow amounts.

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