The End of the Snow

At least for now, anyway.

Yesterday was a lovely day: clear, bright and sunny, with very little wind. It was also very cold overnight (about -10°C). This mean that the snow has started to melt where the sun hits it for any length of time, a condition that precludes our street.

We are seeing some interesting shapes
when the snow melts then freezes again

In a comment on this blog a couple of days ago, Bengt mentioned that their road was snowplowed last Thursday at 10.30, with couple of follow-up treatments (including gritting) the same morning.

We must be in the poorer part of town: We had a tractor unsuccessfully try clear the street on Thursday afternoon - he went as far as he could up the hill, pushing snow in front of him, lost traction, and reversed down the hill again, leaving a wall of snow outside Sylvie and Pierre-Yves' house. This left a nice compact layer of snow which froze overnight into a sheet of ice which has remained in place. The ice was so slippery that the front wall of our house has been in danger of cars sliding into it - some very near misses over the 4 days.

The snowplough retreats, having failed to clear our road

Then on Monday, the road was gritted - by hand. A man in a van, with a bag of salt he spread with a shovel on the worse parts of the ice. This had very little effect.

The ice sheet on Monday.

Yesterday, another attempt was made to grit our road, this time from the bucket of a tractor.

We hope this latest assault will do the trick, because even walking to the boulangerie has been fraught (fraught I tell you) the past couple of days.

Simon