Could they scoop up the snow and put it in dumptrucks to truck to some field somewhere and dump?
Surely somebody in this country has answers, though the biggest answer would be a huge warming trend ....and fast/
Will pray for Oregonians as have been praying for the people of China. God help them - and soon!
Yes, but...
“We are out of room and snow plowing money so are in danger of having to suspend snow plowing of the streets.
Unfortunately, not gonna happen. A new Arctic blast starts coming down from Western Canada in a couple of days. That mayor sounds frustrated. I am sure he is dealing with a state government agency that is spending most of its time worrying about the theoretical affects of global warming. Perhaps it is time to stop looking at the computer models and time to start looking at the actual climate.
The problem is all kinds of logistics come into play not the least of which is snow plows are designed to move snow to the side. But, when you get that much snow down inside man made canyons (Streets between buildings and houses) you can only move so much snow to the side. Then of course you have to move snow "out" and that requires waaay more man power and worse you got to have someplace to dump it.
Then there is the added problem of cars left behind in those streets some of which no doubt got covered up by snow plows. In the Blizzard of 77-78 here in southern Ohio in our small town of 6000 people we had 20 plus cars totaled when the the National Guard brought in Bulldozers to dig our town out (We were literally cut off for several days because the snow obliterated all the roads in and out of our valley.) The snow removal took several days with most of the time spent Hauling the snow to deserted areas to dump it.
IT happened again to our town circa 1996 but this time the Mayor was a little more savy and early on had our own city workers moving snow out of the streets (They would push it to the intersections and front-end loaders and dump trucks were used to dump the snow in the outlying areas.) The National Guard still had to clear our passes to the highways but it was cleared in less than a day.
The Problem now up there in Oregon is I am sure they are too far behind the curve to move that much snow (I Imagine they would spend days now just getting a path to move snow away from the population centers.) You need many many bulldozers and trucks to get ahead of that curve now.
They are gonna need National Guard and Reserves and possibly active duty Military units to achieve that much snow removal.
I hope they get help soon!
In 1996 downtown Kalispell had 14' of snow. They to do just that. Hauled it out of town and dumped it by the flathead river.
Hauling snow is pretty common. It happens all the time here in Michigan. Quite often, snow is trucked to lakes with lower than normal levels.
That would just increase the rate of roof collapses - the melt will pool under the snow (especially low-slope roofs), and slowly penetrate inside - you need a nice slow melt off (oh, sorry - global warming - I guess it will be fast!)
That, or get to shoveling snow off roof and away from house, though, with 7 feet on the ground - (1) you won't need a ladder and (2) it'll be hard to figure out where to throw it!
Good thing it's Feb - if a real HARD freeze came along and started the ice dam process - those resident will be in real trouble!