The snowplow never sleeps - January 19, 2012

It was truly bloody cold this morning. -11°F, according to the car thermometer. And a pretty stiff breeze. MPR reported a wind chill of -40°F.

Let me just say, the dog has way more patience for this kind of nonsense than I do. She was all "sniff sniff sniff WAIT! what's that! it's a PERSON! I must stand stock still and watch this person...." Meanwhile, I am losing sensation the fingertips that are covered in the nice new gloves I got for Christmas.

She never pooped. We went back to the car, and we tried again for a few minutes at home, and she just sniffed and snuffled. Then I went to bed, having not been able to sleep since 3:30 am. When I woke up, Ingrid took me to the office after another futile but brisk walk down the block and back. The wind had died down, but it was still definitely below zero.

I spent part of my sleepless morning reading about the history of snow plowing (cf my earlier post). Snow in the Cities is slow going, mostly a compendium of how different cities did their thing over the course of decades of stop-and-start innovation. There was a phrase that struck me though, that the author glossed over:

As the expanding cities switched in the early [1890's] from horse cars to electric trolleys and from messenger boys to telephones, urban residents in the northern states encountered new wintertime hazards. The increased volume of trade made all interruptions costly, and when a heavy snow not only stalled traffic but felled wires and disrupted communications, small as well as great cities discovered the need for forthright actions. (p. 67)

Now, why would commerce not be affected this way previously? What made the new larger city somehow more desperate for uninterrupted, 24/7 commerce? "The increased volume of trade made all interruptions costly," as if snow and sleet and freezing rain wasn't costly before.

No, I think it's just that people stopped accepting whatever the weather dealt out. There was a kind of stoicism to the Ingalls' endurance of the Long Winter, which New York was now unwilling to keep up. And as new technologies appeared, and as the city adopted them they also adopted the need to keep them operating: New York's elevated railways were partly built to keep traffic moving in winter. Likewise subways (increasing the flow of traffic year-round was the obvious other reason). But once running, they fueled a demand that the rest of the infrastructure be kept clear. Motor vehicles made better snow-clearing possible, but also fueled demand for more complete plowing, not just of the main throoughfares but the side streets as well.

But with all that, there was a growing just-in-time quality to an ever-wider network of trade. That is, as has been documented elsewhere, more and more of our fuel and food came from further and further away. Now? Well, read Michael Pollan on the subject.

This is the "increased volume of trade" Mr McKelvery is talking about. It's not just how much stuff passed through New York, but how important it was. This is the basis for our modern system of making the city streets and major highways as close to clear of frozen water as possible.