Yeah, I forgot the ;^), I'm too used to typing it with glasses.
Seriously, having grown up in Connecticut and lived for some years in upstate New York, I
just can't remember people ever calling it anything but "ice" or "snow" since it all had the same basic effect when driving. I guess we got enough of it that there was no need
to waste shoveling time with further classification.
Actually, the town I lived in in NY had some cobblestone streets, so they couldn't plow all
the way to the surface and salt would have ruined the road, so they plowed off the top
layer, let what was underneath freeze, and then dumped ash on it. The traction was quite
good, the driving surface was actually smoother, and it didn't thaw until April, anyway. I
think that's what we used to do before salt, etc. got popular everywhere, and we were still
burning coal in our homes for primary heating so there was plenty of ash to dispose of.
Thanks to all, I'm surprised actually how common the term is elsewhere.
Of course, driving wasn't nearly so fierce a sport back then, so we didn't see such massive chain accidents. ;^)
Chuck
On Friday, February 23, 2001, at 07:54 AM, Tony Finch wrote:
> Chuck Murcko <chuck@topsail.org> wrote:
> >
> >And BTW, WTF is "black ice"?
>
> Other people have explained the meaning, but I'll just note that it
> has been common terminology in the UK for as long as I've been around.
>
> Tony.
> --
> f.a.n.finch fanf@covalent.net dot@dotat.at
> ROCKALL: NORTHERLY 5 OR 6 DECREASING 3 OR 4. SHOWERS. GOOD.
>
>
Chuck Murcko
Topsail Group
http://www.topsail.org/
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Fri Apr 27 2001 - 23:18:24 PDT