Sidewalk shoveling alignment chart

For your consideration.

Maybe this could be a bingo chart too?

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Over the years, I have been Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Neutral Good, Neutral Neutral, Neutral Evil, and Chaotic Good.

Telling you Iā€™m a Midwesterner without telling you!

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If I lived somewhere that I needed to shovel snow, Iā€™d definitely find a way to do the lawful evil, at least onceā€¦

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Never have I everā€¦

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Is it better to shovel snow onto the lawn than the street, then? I mean obviously if thereā€™s enough to block in cars or something. But I have seen lots of cases where melting and refreezing snow covers the sidewalk in ice, and I thought shoveling it into the street would mean that much less of that.

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When I lived in snowy areas, I always tried to distribute it evenly across all non-walking areas.

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In these here parts there are some who dump the entire contents of their driveway and sidewalk into the street, after the plow has passed by. It interferes with traffic by getting compressed into icy patches, and through thaw and remelt process forms a broad icy patch. Poor form all round.

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From a purely geometric point of view, based on the diagram alone, it looks like you end up shoveling more if you shovel defensively. Of course, we all know that what youā€™ll end up shoveling in the ā€œsecond shovelā€ scenario will be a tall pile of that nasty, chunky snow-ice that the plow inevitably leaves in its wake.

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Yes, butā€¦

There are so many factors:

  • how well does your town/county do street plowing where you are?
  • how likely is it that the plow might just move it right back across your driveway and/or take out your mailbox?
  • how much grassy area do you have available for piling?
  • in cities, is there any real choice where to put it (no driveway, no front yard, etc.)?
  • is there so much volume that you have to spread it out as much as possible because itā€™s too much for one area?
  • do you have an agreement with your neighbor(s) about where to put excessive snow?

Just off the top of my head.

This has been Ask a Midwesterner, episode 652.

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