Can you plow for ice, or is putting down salt the only thing?

January 8, 2025 7:53 AM

I'm in the DC suburbs 48 hours after getting 8 inches of snow. My house is on a cul-de-sac about midway up a steep, 1 mile hill. Said hill is a sheet of ice for all practical purposes, and unascendable without a very powerful 4WD. I want to call to bitch at my county department of public works about my hill, but I'm curious if there 's anything I can request/demand/expect other than the putting down of salt. Thanks!
posted by BadgerDoctor to Science & Nature (12 answers total)

Best answer: I live in a place that frequently gets similar ice buildups and yes, machines exist that can do something about it. I’ve left for work in the morning with my street a 3-inch solid ice skating rink, and returned home in the afternoon to a road scraped down to the surface. It’s possible (and a huge relief to everyone once it gets done!).

Now, whether your municipality has the machinery or people power to do it—that’s another thing altogether. But I think it’s worth it to call and ask. Don’t worry that you’re asking for something that’s technically impossible, you’re not—just ask if they currently have the capability.
posted by hurdy gurdy girl at 8:01 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Best answer: In your area, probably no municipality owns special winter gear the way a town in Michigan or Minnesota might...though possibly they have a heavy dump truck with a plow they could send to hit the ice?

Usually ice should be prevented with salt & sand, and plowing before too many cars pack down the snow into sand.
posted by wenestvedt at 8:04 AM on January 8 [6 favorites]

Best answer: Salt (or a salt substitute) and sand are the main options for solid ice.

Snow plows are designed to just float over solid ice because they are designed to float over solid asphalt and the two aren't much different. A grater will take it off, but they can be kind of hard on the road itself, so that's not necessarily a popular option for cities.

You can just ask for the dangerous hill to be prioritized for action with without trying to demand a specific action -- they're the experts on what they do in these situations, so they're probably going to do what they're going to do, regardless of what you ask for.
posted by jacquilynne at 8:05 AM on January 8 [10 favorites]

Echoing folks above, it's more about whether or not your public works has the equipment to do so. If you're in a place where snow is not frequent, it's less likely. Obviously with climate change, that may change, if it hasn't already.
posted by Kitteh at 8:31 AM on January 8

Response by poster: Spoke to my public works dept and, indeed, they dont have the machinery to break apart ice once it's already formed. Northern Virginia just doesn't get enough snow to warrant having ice-breaking capability on the part of municipalities.

Thanks for your answers!
posted by BadgerDoctor at 8:42 AM on January 8 [4 favorites]

One key to breaking apart solid ice is to keep it from forming in the first place by plowing any snow/sleet that's accumulated before it can freeze solid.
posted by RonButNotStupid at 8:44 AM on January 8 [1 favorite]

Montreal gets iced up from time to time. A couple of years ago the city bought some special ice breaking vehicles, and they've been all but useless. You can only use them on very flat surfaces (we're hilly) and on narrow tolerances for ice thickness. If the ice is too thin, the machine risks tearing up the pavement under it.

I've never seen one of these machines in use. We use salt and lots of small pointy gravel, which gets tracked in everywhere and scratches up floors.

When it gets too cold for salt, we just tough it out.
posted by zadcat at 9:05 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

As a Minnesota kid who lives in New England, I think I have seen a road grader out clearing truly choked streets perhaps a handful of times -- one of those being the winter of 1986 when I remember walking on the snowbanks of Snelling Avenue and looking down on passing buses.
posted by wenestvedt at 10:37 AM on January 8 [2 favorites]

Sand. Gives your tires something to grip.

My vacation cabin in the Adirondacks is on a road that is purposely only plowed to about 3 inches so that snow mobiles can travel on it. They do put down sand for us in cars and trucks. Never had a problem when going at a reasonable speed on the sanded ice layer.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 10:50 AM on January 8 [3 favorites]

If you want a project...you can manually break ice with a sidewalk ice breaker (looks like a big metal scraper) or a concrete breaker (like a big heavy chisel, but you have to be careful you don't get the concrete underneath too) but it's super hard and unpleasant to do, and then the chunks have to go somewhere. I think you can rent a machine like a jackhammer that breaks ice from Home Depot but I personally feel safer with the manual kind.

You can also melt it with a flamethrower like for clearing brush though it's expensive, especially if you don't already have one, and you have to plan for where the water is going (it's just going to refreeze somewhere else.) We used to have a business called "The Dragon" which was a flamethrower truck that you could hire to clear parking lots, but it was prohibitively expensive for most businesses and I haven't seen it much lately.
posted by blnkfrnk at 12:46 PM on January 8 [3 favorites]

If you can get Cherry Stone Grit, this stuff is great for putting traction on a sheet of ice. There may be other types of grit they can get that will give you more immediate relief than sand. Often times, on an incline, all the sand slips down to the bottom and doesn't help much.
posted by advicepig at 1:52 PM on January 8

A few years ago I was in Fairfax County during a snow/ice event. The roads were the worst I ever experienced, despite growing up in Minneapolis and living in Vermont for over 30 years. The roads here in Vermont are usually clear within 2 days of any snow/ice event without icebreakers. The secret seems to be 24 hour continuous coverage and a lifetime of experience.

I think experience is the key. No matter how bad the roads are in Fairfax County, the runways of Dulles Airport are usually clear and ice free. They must be doing something the county isn't. Find out what that is.

Lastly, you may want to get a set of easy to install chains.
posted by Xurando at 2:10 PM on January 8 [1 favorite]