So, it might be okay to eat yellow snow?
It’s never OK to eat yellow snow.
Wait 'til the thaw, then we’ll see what’s what.
EDIT: Whoa, that’s a lot of w’s and t’s.
An upstate NY public radio station did a piece yesterday about the NYS Thruway which uses salt brine (from saltwater) with white sugar beet juice.
The product, which the manufacturer calls Ice Bite "…puts an invisible coating of anti-icing solids on the road that prevent ice and hard packed snow from sticking to the road, so that shovels, snow plows and so forth can easily remove all of the snow and ice leaving a wet road. Even if it’s minus 15 it’s gonna be a wet road on the asphalt that will not freeze. That is a safe-to-drive-on surface.”
Pretty cool!
Yeah, I’d wait a bit - maybe right now it’s too cold to smell.
@crenquis: @IronEdithKidd is right, NEVER eat yellow snow.
Don’t worry, he knows better than that. 
Yeah, that sounds like marketing horseshit.
Just spent the last week up in Milwaukee, the streets were great!
Anything that can dissolve in water can be a deicer.
It has to do with the weight of the molecules dissolved… not any specific property of whatever. Salt. Cheese brine Salt. Sugar. Whatever.
All will work.
Well alcohol in water might work but when the water freezes at the reduced temperature and starts leaving pools of increasingly concentrated alcohol on the street there could be some interesting side effects. “Crazy Uncle Fred went out for a smoke at -40 C and set the street on fire…” (ok so at that temperature I am not sure just a cigarette would ignite pools of alcohol but i like the image. Maybe a chunk of burning magnesium)
a) is that F or C?
b) Safer than driving on ice, granted. But not as safe as a dry surface.
Question two, at 0:35:
I live in the neighborhood testing the Brine. It’s a combo of brine and salt. It’s working well so far; we’ve had above average snow and below average temps. No stink. BUT the majority of neighbors in our Town Hall forums actually would like it to have a cheesy smell. We’re fond of our old non-official slogan: Wisconsin: Smell Our Dairy Air!
Alcohol is expensive. There are other things you could use that would be undesirable.
Californium and Potassium is water soluble and quite heavy… So that would work extra well! Also expensive and radioactive.
Potassium on Ice? I want this on Tuesday Night.
I’m not sure if blowing holes in the road will help.
Why, fireworks, very satisfying reaction.
I don’t remember where, but my father told me about a town piloting the use of brewery wastes as a de-icer for the roads, too.
I mean, I like cheese and everything, but if we find out that a smell does get produced under certain conditions, I’d rather have a smell of beer. Mmm…
I thought using sugar would be possible. It is. I’d rather have sugar on the roads and in ditches and in runoff than salt.
And it would work… but not as well. sugar weighs less than salt.
Also, that would be likely to cause an algae bloom or a boom in the bacterial population (maybe even causing hypoxia) in any water that received the sugary runoff. Still a neat idea though.
I’m confused about why the molecular weight matters though - could you shed some light on this?
