A SNOW-LESS Winter in Bahstin...

Yep.

And here George is in action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G3aYMpaGNdE

i essentially worked from home today...

glad we have two heavy duty metal-tipped shovels for days like this.
them plastic jobs just don't cut it...

I always find that I end up jamming bits of ice between the metal and the plastic, and eventually pop the rivets.

Alas, the search for the perfect affordable blade continues...

My car would have been plowed in AT school. And then I would have had to dig it out there and dig a space out for myself here at home too.

I've found that you really need two shovels, at least, not just one. The usual plastic or aluminum one with the broad flat or sort of half cylinder scoop blade, and also one of these:

which used to be called a coal shovel--my dad used to go down cellar twice a day and fill up the furnace from the coal the coal company dumped in a small storage cubby thru a chute they stuck in a basement window. Then he got an automatic stoker and only had to fill it up every couple days. Every time it gets cold I think of that coal-smelly old furnace and that shovel--heating's much simpler these days. Since coal is so much heavier than snow, it's really overbuilt for the job, heavy metal handle and heavy iron blade, but it's sort of my Platonian ideal of what a shovel is supposed to be, and I've had one for forty years and probably close to 500 snow falls and it's still good.

What it's good for is heavy, wet snow, and for the heavy, crusty stuff that cars have driven over and compacted, and then the snow plow has come along and scraped it over to the side of the street and two feet up the side of your car. Since the blade isn't that wide, you can't get a scoop of that stuff that weights so much you can hardly lift the shovel, and then it falls off the edges of the big shovels because those blades invariably rotate in your hand. The flat-ended heavy duty blade is also perfect for pounding and breaking into chunks the ice that accumulates in your parking space when the stuff melts and refreeezes when the temp. drops again--just used it for that when I dug my car out on Sat.

It's getting harder to find coal shovels, tho I think I saw one at Home Depot a couple years ago--they're shorter than modern snow shovels, so it fit perfectly in my first car, a 62 Bug, and got me out of many snow banks it skidded into.

A coal shovel, a snow shovel, and a BIG bag of kitty litter, and you'll be set.

yard sales in a neighbourhood where folks are moving to retirement homes

hamburgboy is getting ready to move, and someone is going to score some great tools and good old heavy duty yard/snow gear - whether through a yard sale or a visit to a thrift shop after the donation's been dropped off

I carry one of those in the truck during the winter.

Ida never made it home yesterday without it...

(I had no idea it was for coal. never actually seen coal in use)

Iron garden shovels are useful for breaking up ice (as are pitchforks). But, they are not so good for shoveling snow.

What about leaf blowers? Would they be at all effective in blowing the powdery stuff off of walkways? I know they won't do much to ice and wet snow, but how about the light powdery stuff?

I don't know. I've never used a leaf blower. I might try it if I had one. The main problem remains - there's no room to put the snow.

If it worked and had been used from the start of the storms to spread the accumulations out further from the walkways and farther than shoveling distance, would that have made the difference now?

Or, has it just reached the saturation point and nothing would have helped with the quantity of snow that is falling?

Ha! It does work, at least if you have a commercial-strength leaf blower and it is snow powder. Looks like it isn't quite as quick and efficient as shoveling though. It does work great for removing snow from a car.

i've been using a bent-handled model the past two winters.
it's heavy as a bastid by itself, but also extremely durable.
does a good job scraping up ice.

something like this --



i'll use the dirt shovel to break up very thick ice or snow berm...

our basement was equipped for coal at one time.
the previous owner left a lot of stuff behind -- including a small bag of coal, but no coal shovel...

We have an ice chopper . . .

One of the best stories i heard yesterday involved the ice shingles at the lake. The prevailing winds have been creating huge piles of ice and snow on the lake shore which are then covered by the falling snow. Yesterday afternoon, CBC reported that there were jokers down at the lake shore snow boarding on the snow "hills" created at the water's edge.

My father keeps telling me to buy an ice chopper. Do you like it, Set?

Oh and for years (I have no idea what happened to it), he used to drive around with an old, foldable entrenching tool from the Korean Conflict. Dad never actually saw Korea, so I assume the tool was used at Fort Monmouth, Fort Dix, or Fort Huachuca.

I have small shovel (metal-bladed, but not foldable) I keep in my car.
I bought it a couple of years ago at Home Depot. As I brought it to
the counter someone joked that I would have to bend over very low
to use it. I explained that I was buying it for my gardener, Sam Gamgee.

Blank stare in response.

"What's become of his weskit? I don't hold with wearing ironmongery, even if does wear well."

-- Hamfast Gamgee, on seeing Samwise in a chain mail hauberk

One of our neighbours tried using a leaf blower on the light stuff. Didn't seem to work too well - it melted it - refroze as ice which he then had to hire someone to chop away.