Snow, snow, snow ... and snowcleaning

(this was originally written as a comment in another post)

We've had extraordinary much snow in Oslo in this winter, but still nothing to what I experienced in my home town of Tromsø in 1997 - at the 29th of April we had 2.40 metres of snow.

I think that under the most snowy winters in Tromsø, we should just give up fighting against the snow and rather use skis and snow mobiles - but our society has become quite car-dependent, so the roads are cleaned and ploughed. And cleaned. And cleaned again. In Tromsø, the roads used by the bus lines are prioritized, and under adverse conditions people are recommended to use buses rather than going by cars. However, as far as I've heard, the new bus operator have had lots of troubles keeping their buses on the road after I moved from Tromsø. We had one day a couple of years ago in Oslo when it came really a lot of snow during one night - but I'm completely shocked on how it was handled; apparently there was no "buses first"-policy, the bus services was simply cancelled for that day! Even in the evening, when all the roads had been cleaned, most of the bus lines were still cancelled.

We used to dump the snow on the sea, and especially downtown that's an easy operation. Rumors has it they once managed to dump a car to the sea, as it was hidden under the snow. One can easily understand it's possible by looking at this video from the 1960s (those long ploughing vehicles are still in use):

When being further away from the sea the snow is either stacked up in heaps, dumped down hills or transported away by lorries. Here is a more present-day presentation:

And still, the snow falls in Tromsø is nothing compared with how much they sometimes experience on the mountain passes on the west coast. Two metres is pretty normal, eight metres is pretty rare:

In 1997, when we had snow record in Tromsø, it was indeed a problem that some people got entrapped in their houses. Seems like doors in Canada opens up into the house instead of out of the house to prevent people from becoming trapped:

Lately here in Norway the snow has been considered to be too polluted to be dumped to the sea - now, that's seriously fucked up. Snow should be white and clean, but with all the car traffic, all the salt used on the roads, usage of studded car tires on the asphalt, etc, the snow tends to get black and dirty.

Another problem, a cleaned road can be quite much of a barrier, both for wildlife, skiers and snow mobiles. Like, there used to be just forest between my place in Tromsø and the university - perfect for skiing. However, due to all the outdoor parking places they've built, and all the internal roads connecting the parking places together, one has few options but to take off the skis and walk down the last downhills, that's a shame.

When ploughing, the snow is basically moved and compressed on the side of the road. The road gets narrower, fences, garbage bins, cars hidden under the snow and postboxes may get damaged, and it causes a lot of cursing as people will have to shovel away snow deposited in front of their driveways. Shortcuts used by pedestrians often also starts by climbing over such compressed snow.

It's often a big problem to find places to deposit all the snow that gets cleaned away - and far too often it ends up in big heaps on roads and passes that are only used by pedestrians. I remember once here in Oslo I was with a pram, going to use a twenty metre shortcut, but it was completely impossible as one needed to climb several metres over some heap of cleaned snow. The alternative was to walk two hundred metres and back again ... really annoying.