The snow doesn't melt ...

One of the goals of this year was to experience life in another city as a resident; rather than be a tourist in a city. It brings up things that we've never thought of in our comfortable lives in Canberra.

This week's realisation is that the snow doesn't melt and therefore, it doesn't go away. More just keeps on coming. I'd never thought of that before. At Perisher, it warms to temperatures above zero enough days to melt the snow. We've been here nealy four weeks and the temps haven't risen about zero yet. So that snow freezes hard, then more snow comes, and it freezes hard ... and so on! It becomes a problem and somehow, the snow needs to be removed.

Snow clearers come along to clear the snow so that you can drive, park and walk. There are very strick parking regulations on the roads, to allow the snow clearers to come along about every second night and clear the sides of the roads. In carparks, several parking places are lost to the huge, and growing, piles of snow that are pushed into the corner. These piles are huge, which I've tried to show in the photos. This photo on the left shows how big the pile is, in comparison to the cars. It is huge!

We've been told this snow lasts until May! In the photo on the right, the exposed areas are not rock or dirt: it is pure, solid ice. The fresh, powder snow has been blown off so that it is just the ice exposed now.


 This photo shows the gap left for the foot path. Huge mounds of snow on each side, with a gap left for pedestrians.

 This photo shows how the carpark is clear of snow, as a result of heating from cars and pedestrians melting it away. But an area where cars don't directly travel over, such as the base of the stop sign, doesn't melt at all.

Imagine the big trucks that deliver mulch or soil in Australia. They are big, open-topped tip-trucks which have a volume of several tonnes. Well, the same trucks are used here, albeit for a difference purpose. They follow the snow clearers around. With the help of small diggers, the snow piled by the snow clearer is scooped up and collected by the diggers, then dumped into the tip-trucks. It is taken to some place around town that obviously fills up with snow. This amazes us! Tony wants the job of driving the small diggers around. He thinks it would be warm sitting in the cabins and he would get his fix of tractor driving at the same time! Now to polish up on that French ..

I had never thought about snow being such an issue. I had never imagined that it could stay around so long that it was a hazard. But with temps being below zero since the Christmas, its not going anywhere fast; in reality, with every dump, the amount of snow is increasing.

The things you learn!