swwhite

Two days ago I announced my winter certification. Yesterday I drove to work because I had to pick up kids. Today I understand why the Eskimos have many words for snow.

Yesterday it snowed about two inches before the plowing had been completed from the snowstorm of Saturday four days ago. So this morning, ths side streets had more unplowed snow on top of the prior unplowed snow. Armed with my new confidence and my studded tires, I headed off to work by bike this morning. I made it, but it wasn't pretty. I had planned to stay off the busy streets, but I couldn't stay up on the side streets, and the sidewalks were unshoveled, covered with stuff tossed up by the plows, or nonexistent.

But anyway, my new familiarity with snow has made me more aware of the many types of it, and I can understand how people whose lives are connected closely to it could have many words for its many forms. So far I have observed:

Untouched newly-fallen. This one can ride through without too much effort, unless, I suppose, it is too deep and the pedals dip into it on the downstroke.

Hard-packed. This is what is left after the plows have gone over it. It is stable, tires don't sink in, and studs show their value.

Slush. This is partially melted snow, either by heat or by road chemicals. Tires push this stuff aside.

Tire-chewed. This is what is on the roads before they have been plowed but after they have been used by much automobile traffic. It is somewhat hard, but also loose, so that a tire will ride up on it, and then the snow will give way and shift, taking the tire with it because the tire has not been able to sink down to get a bite of pavement. This stuff makes a road impassable (in my opinion).

Plow throw-off. This is the hard and dirty stuff that plugs the sidewalk entry points after the plow has gone over the street.

It is beginning to look like my fantasy of showing up for work after a major snowstorm paralyzes all motorized traffice is nothing but a fantasy. If the side streets AND the main streets were covered by chewed up snow, I think I would take the bus.

ax0n

This was one of my favorite pictures from last winter's commuting adventures. It rivals any mountain bike singletrack stuff I've ever tried riding on. Admittedly, I am a fairly inexperienced mountain bike rider, and this probably doesn't compare to some of the gnarlier stuff that hardcore MTBers ride on.



I usually don't mind tire-chewed. The only stuff I hate is the above. I call it "boulder snow" but "plow throw-off" is just as accurate. Evil, wretched stuff. It freezes and becomes very, very difficult to navigate.

ItsJustMe

You realize, of course, that this isn't true at all. Eskimos don't have any more words for snow than any other culture that exists where there's snow, in fact less than some.

Scientists have a HELL of a lot of words for snow, if you want a replacement phrase.

swwhite

Well, yes, I guess I don't know that of my own knowledge. I was a little loose with the facts because I heard it somewhere else and it sounded good. On the other hand, I can see where it might be handy to have a one-word description of something that I needed a paragraph to describe.

tjspiel

I'm in Minneapolis too. When it was snowing hard yesterday afternoon I was at first excited because I wanted to try the low-tire pressure trick for dealing with loose snow so many people suggested. However, after my wife called to remind me that she needed to get into work last night and I couldn't afford to be home late, I realized that experiment would have to wait. I left the bike at work, jogged a couple of miles until I was out of downtown and caught the light rail at cedar-riverside. I rode that for another couple of miles and then jogged the rest of the way home. It was a 45 to 50 minute trip as opposed to my normal 40 minute studded tire equipped MTB trip as opposed to my normal 25-30 minute road bike trip.

I'm sure the residential streets won't be a cleaned up tonight either so I'll see how the low tire pressure thing works.

cycle2work

Well, I had big plans for cycling in the cold and the dark for the first time this year. Got the clothes and lighting worked out. Did real well through November, too.

Even got the battery operated Christmas lights trick going after Thanksgiving.

Then we had an ice/snow storm here in Western MA this past Monday.

Darn. No way am I going to ride through that slippery crud.

Sigh...Spring seems a long way off at the moment...

ItsJustMe

It's my understanding that the Inuit language is about the same as any other in this regard. What early explorers took to be a lot of different words were actually nouns and modifiers, like if we said "This kind of snow is StickyCrap, that over there is FrozenCrud, and this here is LightFluffyStuff."

CliftonGK1

Mountaineers have a lot of words for different types of snow, but most of them relate to avalance potential so they don't work for the conditions you find when riding. The crazy Finn who was the waxing genius for my old ski team had about 2 dozen words for different snow conditions, but I'm pretty sure that he just made most of them up.

modernjess

I think you pretty much covered the snow types we mainly deal with in the The Twin Cities in winter. I looks like this year we'll get a lot of practice in all of it.

I had to drive on Tuesday in the snowy rush hour, and after my 75 minute (normally 15 minute) commute. I realized, as challenging as it probably would have been to ride, I could have made it home and back in the same amount of time it took to drive, and it would have been a great adventure. Today's snow might do the same to rush hour, but today I'm on the bike! yes!

see ya out there!