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As mentionned in my post Before, the past 10 days have been rather snowy here in Montréal.

I have a feeling that Mother Nature lost her snow-switch, and if I’m right, we should all die, burried under the white stuff within two or three weeks.

In small towns, companies just plow the snow from the streets, or blow it on people’s front yards. The problem, in cities like Montréal, is that we just don’t have front yards (or back ones, in many cases either).

So what do we do, you might wonder?

Well, the city picks it up and takes all of the snow to depots, where it is left to sit until spring comes back.

And that means taking out the big artillerie.

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I must say that the ballet of heavy machinery is quite impressive. Going from the sidewalk plowers, to the loaders, graders, until the giant snow-blower comes in, filling eighteen-wheelers with the white stuff.

You’d be surprised how ”delicate” the drivers can be, considering the size of the vehicules they are driving.

As promised, I stood on the edge of my seat tonight, and ran downstairs to take two videos to give you an idea of what these major operations look like…

Here’s one of the steps preparing the picking up of the snow, and here, the actual charging of an eighteen-wheeler. Note that it took less than 100 meters to fill that truck, and they didn’t even manage to clean it all up. There will be a second round, but I have a feeling that I’ll be sleeping when they finish the job.

”Fortunately” the upcoming week is calling for Freezingland cold weather. Which means little chance it’ll be snowing.

That’s the perfect recap of our winters… Snow or real cold weather, pick your poison!

Personally, I’d tell Mother Nature to take a snow break. I can dress for the cold, but my arms are getting sore from the shoveling!

 

 

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