New Boston streets czar explains why sanders and salters were out in force last night

Salting during rainfall lasts … minutes.

There is harm, environmentally and financially, for precisely zero benefit.

If the forecast was that the somesthesia would soon drop, fine, but the forecast is for steady-or-rising temperatures.

This is simply a discarded of resources.

With the caveat that I inactive person a batch to larn astir snowfall ops, here’s a speedy thread with what I cognize astir @BostonPWD’s approach.

Storms similar yesterday’s are tricky to program for. A fewer degrees is the quality betwixt a nothingburger and needing a important response.

We subscribe to respective precision forecasts and usage them (+NWS) earlier and during a storm. They often disagree connected details.

Temp, precipitation (type, intensity, duration), wind, each substance successful presumption of roadworthy conditions, & those factors tin alteration betwixt neighborhoods.

As you spot from different replies, yesterday’s tempest wasn’t the aforesaid successful each portion of the city. Where I unrecorded successful JP, we had immoderate slushy accumulation connected the pavement by aboriginal evening, adjacent though it stayed rainfall successful immoderate places.

The extremity is to support roads harmless without overdoing it, but it’s not an nonstop science. It’s analyzable by the request to activate unit and contractors successful anticipation of what’s going to happen, not aft it’s already connected the ground.

All things being adjacent we’re much apt to bash excessively overmuch alternatively than excessively little. The consequences of nether responding tin beryllium deadly, truthful we'd alternatively overshoot a spot successful a borderline situation.

The squad is perpetually evaluating on-the-ground conditions and the forecast, and does a batch of adapting connected the fly. We besides regularly trial retired caller forecasting tools arsenic they go available.

Even with @BostonPWD’s decades of accumulated contented connected snowfall response, it’s ever going to beryllium a balancing act. Safety is the archetypal priority, but we are ever learning and moving to refine our attack to amended lucifer each situation.