Skip main navigation

New offer! Get 30% off one whole year of Unlimited learning. Subscribe for just £249.99 £174.99. New subscribers only T&Cs apply

Find out more

Problems with snow

text
4.3
As we have discussed earlier in this course, snow can be fantastic, but it can also generate big problems. Often these problems arise when there is a lot of snow coming in short time. For example, on the roads, you need to remove the snow. But sometimes, of course, the personnel that are plowing the roads can’t be at all places at the same time. So, of course, smaller roads might actually have a lot of snow on them, which makes it more or less impossible to drive on the roads.
40.6
Another thing can also be when you have that much snow is, for example, in city centres, even though you can plow the snow, you need somewhere to put it. And in city centres, they can be a problem with having these spaces to actually put the snow. And there it can actually take weeks to actually remove all the snow from the city centre to a better place to store it. Another thing couple to road and snow is also when vehicles are driving on the snow on roads which are not already plowed, the roads will get really uneven.
75
And in that case, for example, with buses that are out driving almost the whole day, vibrations that are caused by this unevenness can actually cause the buses to break. Another thing not connected, the roads are also roofs. With this large amounts of snow, the weight on the roofs can be extreme. And in some cases, the roofs are not built for this, so it’s really important to shovel the snow from the roof. And if it’s not done in the appropriate time. The roofs can actually break. Then the final example is, for example, if you’re out in the mountains driving snowmobile or just skiing, if a snowfall comes, you can completely lost your vision, making your orientation almost impossible.
133
So you can actually get lost up in the mountains, often then the best way to deal with this is to just stay at the place where you are and try to dig a bivac and then stay there until the snow stops. But these are just some of the problems that can arise with snow. Do you have any experience of this or any other situation where there can be problems with snow.

When it is snowing it can be beautiful, but there also a lot of problems that can arise!

Here we give some examples of problems with snow as:

  • Plowing roads
  • Removing snow
  • Vibrations caused by uneven roads
  • Heavy snow on roofs
  • Orientation

Discussion

  • Do you have any experience of problems with snow?
This article is from the free online

Snow: What It Is and Why It Matters

Created by
FutureLearn - Learning For Life

Reach your personal and professional goals

Unlock access to hundreds of expert online courses and degrees from top universities and educators to gain accredited qualifications and professional CV-building certificates.

Join over 18 million learners to launch, switch or build upon your career, all at your own pace, across a wide range of topic areas.

Start Learning now