Snow, Freezing Rain, Rain and then Snow. When to clear up?

[sixdogs]

The only time snow removal is an immediate thing is if it's wet and slushy and colder weather is possible. It doesn't take much.

When I lived in northern New England we got a bad slushy storm and temps were in the 30's. It was hard to plow so I went inside and planned to get to it ASAP. That turned into the next day and by then temps were way below zero and winds picked up. My plow truck, blade frame and blade were totally frozen in the deep slush and to the ground.

It took me most of the day to get that truck un-stuck. After a day of super cold, all that slush was frozen and I had a farm to plow out. No dice. The plow held on for dear life.

To further teach me a lesson, temps stayed super cold for maybe 10 days and then we got snow on top. I still couldn't plow because of the ruts in the ice under the snow. I just had to wait out the weather. Lesson learned; don't be that guy.

 

[Carl_NH]

Sixdogs - thats the situation here this AM 15 degrees and the remaining slush piles are frozen solid.

Then lows in the teens and 5* overnight until Thursday when we are supposed to get another 3-4".

Glad I plowed the wet snow yesterday when I could.

 

[bdhsfz6]

2.5" of snow topped with .5" of ice from the last one here. I waited for the freezing rain to stop before plowing but the contractor who plows one of the driveways didn't. Unfortunately, he plowed a single lane of the lower half mile of our 1.25 mile private road to get to the driveway.

I was able to plow off the snow & ice down to the gravel surface, but where the contractor plowed is now a half inch sheet of glaze ice. I'm going out now with the ash spreader.

The only trouble I had was the .5" ice sheet on top of the snow kept tripping the plow springs. I had to go very slowly and it took 4 times longer than it usually does. If the ice were any thicker, I would have had to use the scarifier on the stone rake to break it up.

This happened once about 30 years ago. I had to pile concrete blocks on the rake to keep the scarifier teeth from riding up on the ice. It was a real mess!