Midwest ICE STORM?!?!

[teejk]

I suspect that your estimate of May is probably fairly accurate if you don't salt it. Your grooves will fill with water during the day and freeze solid overnight so the next day you'll be right back where you started.

Was kinda thinking that freezing solid would be a good thing...water expands as it freezes so would act much like a wedge in a log. All I want to do is break up the sheet...mother nature seems to be pretty good at dealing with it from there.

 

[coobie]

Had quite a few Ice storms here in michigan over the last few years.They are no fun..

 

[GMIslander]

Don't salt a gravel driveway.

I sometimes use a salt/sand mix (20 salt 80 sand approx.) that is borrowed from the DOT.
The sand is quite dark and draws the heat of the sun. Does a great job.

 

[ovrszd]

I sometimes use a salt/sand mix (20 salt 80 sand approx.) that is borrowed from the DOT.
The sand is quite dark and draws the heat of the sun. Does a great job.

Salting a gravel road lowers the freezing point. The melted salt solution soaks into the roadbed. So now your road rarely freezes, just soaks up all the air moisture. Not good.

teejk has the right idea, hoping for a hard freeze to break it up. I like the idea of something to scratch the surface. Even a drag harrow would help get rid of the ice.

 

[NoTrespassing]

I have a steep hill that I have to salt and calcium chloride when it gets covered in ice. The hill gets zero sun in the winter and never melts on it's own until it warms up. With the steep grade, the water runs off after the salt and calcium chloride melts the ice.

Kevin

 

[Industrial Toys]

My Parking lot and driveway are virtual ice rinks. Hope it will melt down to gravel in the next few days.

A friend is a Senior Environmental Scientist with a large utility. He thinks the fact that we have not been hit by major ice storm power outages, is pure luck. He thinks in a bad case, people could be without power for months, and he, like me, believes in sturdy (slow running) backup systems with backups for those.

 

[MossRoad]

About 20 something years ago there was an ice storm that came through Indiana a bit north of Indianapolis. Some folks were without power for 6 weeks. You can still see the damage on trees to this day that were stripped of branches from the weight of the ice.

 

[Redneck in training]

The ice storm in our area was no event. We got about 0.25" of ice on the road. All trees were just iced enough to look pretty in sun light. It all melted several hours later.