How are our folks in the Northeast doing after the ice storm

[Moonlight]

I had never heard of it being a problem either. But after watching 4 Giovannas go from pristine to rusted with chrome literally peeling off in the course of one winter, I'm not a big fan.

[b29flteng]

Muddy, I grew up in Minnesota, land of 10 million liberals, and they used salt and it never damaged the eco system of lakes and streams there. It did ruin a lot of cars though. From what I heard, the salt is used just to keep the sand from freezing so it can be spread on the roads easily.

[muddyboots]

You're still missing the idea, B29. You use it every winter, and you ecosystem would have a better chance to adapt to the seasonally changing environment than Puget. If Puget gets it once every five to ten years, it will be a fresh shock every time to animals that have never experience it. Your great lakes see it every year and have had a chance to adapt to the idea of a load of salt dumped on their heads every year.
I'm not sure but I also suspect your islands serve as a filter for the water as well... and finally, the great lakes dump into the Illinois, then the mississippi, and then the GUlf of MExico. Where the winter salt being dumped from a dozen other states combines to cause fish kills along the Louisiana coastline.

Oh wait. I keep forgetting you don't believe in all this sciency stuff. It's all magic, B29. God wiggles his fingers every spring over the mouth of the Mississippi and killls all those fish because they're gay. Sorry if I confused you

[Bill Walker]

Just to add to the general weather picture: we expect a little snow here in the Great White North, but this is ridiculous. We were all set to head out to the relatives this morning, just needed a snowplow to clear off our cul-de-sac so we could get out to the main road. When we saw the plow round the corner, we started to load the car. The plow got stuck in front of our house, blocking the street for about an hour until the crew, plus a bunch of us locals, could dig it out.

Whatever happened to global warming? I was really counting on that.

Muddyboots, I agreed with your post right up until you talked about the great lakes emptying into the Mississippi. you may have the sciencey bits figured out, but you need to work on the geography bits.

Last edited by Bill Walker on Wed Dec 24, 2008 1:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[b29flteng]

Maybe we DO need global warming, then we wouldn't have winters and need to spread salted sand and burn stuff to keep warm. Hmmm, maybe Algore is wrong?

[muddyboots]

Muddyboots, I agreed with your post right up until you talked about the great lakes emptying into the Mississippi. you may have the sciencey bits figured out, but you need to work on the geography bits.

follow the blue lines, and you'll see taht I do not need to polish up my geography


There are a lot of other issues to look at, like why don't the rivers have massive die offs (the salt and the fish collect in different layers in the winter in freshwater normally) and the oceans do (salt levels work differently in salt water)

but ingeneral, the mouth of the Mississippi gets alt water fish kills every few years. Usually due to blizzards up north

[Bill Walker]

follow the blue lines, and you'll see taht I do not need to polish up my geography

The blue lines that all go into the Mississippi, like the Illinois and the Edwards, all end before you get to the Great Lakes. The water in the Great Lakes goes over the falls at Niagara, then down the St. Lawrence River. It carries a lot of "salt" and industrial waste, from both sides of the border, and is slowly killing off the fresh water beluga whales in the St. Lawrence, amongst other things. I know this is hard for you Yanks, but try to find a map of the world that doesn't end at the US border .

The real problem with road "salt" is that the word salt is used in a very generic way. Most of us think of the salt that comes from the sea, and that we put on our fries, but the chemicals often used on roads are all sorts of nasty salt compounds. Great for melting ice, but very hard on living things - like us.

[muddyboots]

The Illinois River is a principal tributary of the Mississippi River, approximately 273 miles (439 km) long, in the U.S. state of Illinois. The river drains a large section of central Illinois, with a drainage basin of 40,000 square miles (104,000 km²). The river was important among Native Americans and early French traders as the principal water route connecting the Great Lakes with the Mississippi. The colonial settlements along the river formed the heart of the area known as the Illinois Country. After the construction of the Illinois and Michigan Canal and the Hennepin Canal in the 19th century, the river's role as link between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi was extended into the era of modern industrial shipping. The Illinois River is an important part of the Great loop; the circumnavigation of Eastern North America by water.

The Illinois Waterway system consists of 336 miles of water from the mouth of the Chicago River to the mouth of the Illinois River at Grafton, Illinois. It is a system of rivers, lakes, and canals which provide a shipping connection from the Great Lakes to the Gulf of Mexico via the Mississippi River. The Illinois and Michigan Canal opened in 1849. In 1900, the Chicago Sanitary and Ship Canal replaced it and reversed the flow of the Chicago River so it no longer flowed into Lake Michigan. The United States Army Corps of Engineers maintains a 9 foot deep navigation channel in the waterway.[1]

Read it carefully please, or you'll miss the connection in all those river and junk. It took me a bit to find the right sources, and I'm scared to cut anything...
Bill, I promise, it collects great lakes water and it puts it into the Mississippi. The only reason I know any of this is because my great great granwhatever was captured in the War Between the STates, and interred at Camp Douglas, on the shore of Lake Michigan. He died there and his grave was eaten by the lake. I did a bunch of reasearch on this back in the 90's when I was doing some geneology work.

I know you Canucks have trouble with the idea that anybody but you can be hurt by Yankee polution, but they've been pooing in our food for years and years, same as you guys...

[Bill Walker]

I know about the canal Muddyboots, but thats a drop in the bucket (literally) compared to what goes over Niagara Falls and then down Lake Ontario into the St. Lawrence. Her Majesty The Queen says I can use this map of Hers to make the point. See, there are things after the US border!

[muddyboots]

Her majesty seems to be focusing on her possessions in North America
I am totally aware that you guys receive a lot more poo directly than we do. Unfortunately you are ignoring all the watershed connection the Lakes have to us. most of the water that drains south from them eventually makes its way to us, and I am also not claiming that the Lakes are the sole provider of mineral content in the Gulf.

The Mississippi river drains almost ALL of the water between the Rockies and the Appalachians. Your GL water is only a fraction of that for us down here. Maybe 5% of all of the mississippis water comes directly from the lakes. (I don't remember all the numbers so I'm not claiming accuracy within 10% in my numbers here)
I'm still not sure why you think I claimed the lakes are so damaging to us down here. If it sounded that way I apologize--I was more focused on the point that the runoff from 30 or so of our 50 states dumps on us, and taht of those, probably 25 salt their roads and it makes its way into the gulf. That is a LOT of salts.

When you mind taht two of those remaining 20 states aren't even on the mainland...you get something like half of the water in the US draining into the gulf. That's a LOT of poo. Far more than you get from your little sissy lakes. Even if they DO have a quarter of all of earths freshwater

Someone else pointed out that it isn't necessarily sopdium chloride being put in them too. That makes a big difference imo. It's not the right kind of salt for fish to be living in...

[Bill Walker]

No argument about who's poo goes where, just disagreed with the statement that the great lakes drain to the south. It all goes north east, except for a little bit that leaks through the canal in Chicago.

I'm off to drive along the north shore of Lake Ontario right now, to spend Christmas with relatives near YTR. Merry Christmas to all, see you in a few days.

[BigGrey]

The salts used on the roads damage more than the waters. At Lake Tahoe in CA/NV, the pine trees along the roads are brown from salt damage. The browning is evident up to about the height the plows throw the snow off the roadway. And just about all the water from the surrounding hills and mountains drains into the lake.

Les