What's up with the national shortage of calcium chloride? Was at the local farm store and thought I saw a sign for limit 2 bags per customer due to national shortage. I didn't stop to look close so maybe it was for something else?
I have a JD-1023 with a front loader and R4 tires. It does ok without chains but much better with them.
My guess is that recent high demand across a huge area of the country is creating an artificial shortage. Hordes of people normally glued to their tv's lurched en masse into every business they could and scarfed it all up like toilet paper in 2020.
I use magnesium chloride on the areas where my dog walks. I just checked my local Ace Hardware (online) and they're out. I've got plenty of rock salt and mag/chl so we're good.
Same here, plenty of rock salt at home. It's going to be so cold that I don't anticipate needing ice melt much at all anyway. Sand will come in handier on my driveway, which runs downhill.
My real concern with this storm is the temps coming next week. We are looking at a mix of snow and frozen rain. And it's going to stay frozen for a while. My prep so far was to move about 10 days' worth of wood up near the house. Today my wife pulled a ham bone she had stored in the freezer from Christmas and made ham and bean soup. She took some to both our moms. I have a large pot of my famous beef stew in a red sauce cooking on the stove now. Later I need to fill the bathtub up with water so we can flush if the power goes out. That is my only problem with having a well. One day I want to get a generator to hook up to that. Beer fridge is full. Stay safe and warm everyone! Today 18 outside 69 inside burning red and white oak. I love oak.
Speaking of salt and sand - at the risk of insulting folks' intelligence, I use a lot of wood ashes on my driveway turn-around spot and my walkways. It's abrasive for good traction like sand, and also with its high potassium content it helps melt snow and ice at reasonable temperatures, especially where the sun can shine on the darker surfaces. The downside is, when things start to melt it makes a "mud" that is easily tracked around, but that's no worse than salty shoes. Of course, if you burn pallets, fenceposts, or anything that might contain nails or wire, say in an outdoor wood stove, you might not want to try this on your driveway.
Kinda figured but thought I'd ask before jumping to conclusions. Luckily I don't need any. Seems when I bought this bag before Christmas there wasn't allot. I heard a worker at Menards, at the time, say something about him being surprised they still had some when I asked where it was. It's in a biggish city for around here and maybe they usually run out when it snows?
I use the skinny pedal to shoot the hill. I remember my late 80s 2wd ranger and having to try several times after sliding downhill backwards to restart. Fun times.
Yep, that's a real concern. We're due for 1/2" or more of freezing rain on top of the snow and sleet. Usually when we get ice storms, the melting starts within a day or two. I don't expect much melting this coming week with lows around zero and highs in the teens. We have pretty much no hope of maintaing our electrical power this week, but luckily we do have a diesel generator that will run our well, etc. It's just a little bit of a PITB to keep it fed, cranked back up on frigid mornings, etc. But we're better off than many. La Nina mild winter my foot! LOL
In the late 90s I was at work. It had rained a cold rain all day but I didn't think much of it. My wife called about 3PM and asked if I was going to be able to get home? I replied, "I guess, why?" She said we had about 6-8" of snow at home, which is maybe 1200' higher than where I was working and a 45-minute drive normally. I finished my shift which was supposed to end at 6PM, but of course we got a late medic call, so it was about 8PM before I started home in my little '86 2WD 4-cyl. Ranger, which fortunately was equipped with real snow tires. About halfway home there's a long mountain grade, and the rain changed to snow on the ground just a couple miles before I hit the grade. Try as I might, I couldn't make it up the mountain. So I pulled into a closed business at the foot of the mountain, and used a trash can lid to pack my bed and camper top as full of snow as I could pack it. That gave me enough weight to get up the long mountain, and then the long, steeper mountain just before home, where we had well over a foot by that point but the roads had been scraped a time or two. I think I got home just before midnight that night. Luckily neither of us had to work the next day. But wouldn't you know it - it turned off real cold right after that, and that snow froze into a solid ball of ice in the back of my truck. LOL. It was over a month before it got warm enough for me to pick it out of there. Yes, fun times!
That sounds interesting. Nothing like that here. Looks to be about a 20ft rise from the road and it's about 400ft away. The ravine in my backyard is some of the larger elevation change for this area.
