If this were Michigan, where they have ample resources to make the snow manageable for drivers, I’m completely with you.
Maryland has shown that it does not have the proper amount of resources to do this. We had entire lanes of streets just unplowed for god knows why.
My neighborhood decided to do the bare minimum despite taking our damn HOA fees for literal moments like this and not ploy any parking spots, making our parking lot an ice skating rink around half the spaces.
Well the most recent storm was a once in a generation kind of storm. The snowcrete was really impossible for weaker plows to deal with. Like we have the big plows and then we have some that are like a plowing mechanism attached to an f350, and that second type couldn’t handle the snowcrete. So that’s why it was SO bad.
It was once in a generation for Maryland. Living in Michigan for 3 years though showed me that there are levels to the snow.
They don’t let it get so icy in Michigan with the amount that we got. The local governments don’t play around with letting the snow sit because it will snow and the temperature drops even lower to the negatives.
My school had heated sidewalks and just shovels the sidewalks so that we could walk to class. It snowed 5 feet one time and schools were not canceled. 5 feet might cause Maryland to truly fall apart.
Right but surely you can see how if this is a once in a generation storm for this area, it wouldn’t make much sense to have Michigan infrastructure? It costs a lot of money to maintain all of that. They didn’t let it get so icy because they wanted to or they didn’t care… they don’t have the resources here to prevent that. And what resources we do have were also desperately needed by the entire east coast, because the storm reached as far south as Georgia and as far north as Massachusetts. So there wasn’t enough salt to go around.
I’m not so much disagreeing with anything you’ve said, just expressing frustration at the lack of preparedness that Maryland and VA had with this storm. Its not like having the necessary resources is impossible. It’s all about the funding to private businesses that specialize in snow and ice removal.
In my job, we had a client come in who used to own a plowing business in the 80s and 90s here and he said that what he had seen this winter was a joke. He would have his people parked at the malls an entire day in advance to salt it and they would stay there until it was plowed.
Anecdotal example, but given how the entire state looked for the past month, I think he made a good point.
I will be 46 in a short time and have experienced only a handful of ice storms in my life. That literally was a once in a generational storm where the forecast called for a 1/4'' of ice and then we all woke up to an inch of ice followed by 3 weeks of temps that never got out of the 20's. There was no way for the state or any local office to be prepared for that at all. Frustrations aside, there was nothing anyone could do except bring in crews of temp labor and have 500 shovels and skid loaders for days.
Our history shows that the snow won't hang around that long. Besides the 4' we got in back to back storms in 2010, this is the longest I remember seeing snow still on the ground at the depth it was when the storm passed us by. We had 8'' of snow covered in an inch of ice on the ground for 3 weeks.
2010 was insane, there was that and then sometime around 2005 or 2006 we had something similar to the snowcrete. I remember bc I was a child and I could skate over the ice layer in my snow boots without breaking through. But this storm was the same and I weigh easily twice what I weighed at 9 years old lmfao
And the point I’m making is that if they were prepared on day zero, before the snow even touched the ground, then it wouldn’t have been “once in a generation”.
Its all about money at the end of the day. They made a decision to not put the necessary amount of funds within that first 48 hours.
I’m not gonna pretend to know how much that costs, i’m just stating my frustration that they didn’t, especially at my job and neighborhood.
Yeah, I get being frustrated. Getting stuck inside and not being able to go back to daily life fucking blows, part of why I’m able to enjoy the snow is that I work from home. But when we say it was once in a generation, we mean the severity of the storm, not the response to it. Meteorologists will be studying that storm in school, it was that unique, especially with the long period of below freezing temps than followed. No amount of salt could have prevented the outcome, and like I said there’s only so much salt available and the entire east coast needed it. And we simply don’t own enough of the big plows to handle that much ice.
This storm today and the one forecasted for next week should be much less impactful, even if they dump a taller pile of snow, since the temperature is much warmer this time around.
Guess I am lucky to live in an area that prepared days before with salting and had plows all through the night constantly plowing and salting. Even still, the snowcrete ultimately won. Thin layer of ice at the bottom, 10 inches of snow, 3 inches of top ice layer. Was a pain being "stranded" for a bit and having to hire someone to dig me out because shoveling wasn't working but honestly, it was the most beautiful storm that I've ever witnessed in my lifetime. Blizzards of yesteryear or 2000s don't compare to the effect that ice layer gave. Ice skating in the front yard was cool too. Being able to walk on top of the snow no matter how much you weigh was a first. Watching the foxes on top of the snow not make tracks. Loved it! Last night's snow was pretty and is melting off quick but I will always remember our Snowcrete 2026. Lol
Well in the 80s and 90s we weren’t as conscientious of the effect all that salt has on our watershed. Even the amount they had to use for the storm the other week is going to have a very negative impact on our local waters… but it’s a bit over shadowed by. You know. The poopageddon.
I’ve just had my feed speckled with WTF WHY IS THIS SNOW STILL HERE for weeks now and it gets frustrating to me bc no one seems to want to acknowledge what a freak storm this was. Maybe because it wasn’t 4 feet high like 2010 was, it’s not as obvious how bad this was?
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u/Tempyteacup Feb 22 '26
The forecast has snow again next week :)
(I actually love winter and delight in proper winter weather so I’m very happy)