Cold Snaps: What are they and how does Ohio U manage?

Photo via: Famartin/Public domain/Wikimedia Commons

Cold weather isn’t anything new in Ohio, but cold snaps like this one are rare. Last year the lowest recorded temperature in Athens sat in the low 20s. This year the temperature went negative. As for snow, last year Athens received only a few inches, but this year Ohio University was hauling snow off campus because there wasn’t anywhere to put it. 

Cold snaps are generally caused by polar vortexes. A polar vortex is cold air that spins around the North Pole, propelled by jet streams of air. As the jet streams weaken, a polar vortex can expand, sending a rush of cold air southward to regions that wouldn’t normally experience it.

Steve Mack is the Executive Director of Facilities Management for Ohio U. The department works on various things, including snow and ice removal. He says he’s never seen anything like this in his almost 30 years working here. 

“I think the last time this happened would have been about ‘93 or ‘94,” Mack said. “Typically, you know, we're getting anywhere from 2 or 3 inches. If we get six inches, that's a lot of snow for us.”

Mack added that his department had to deal with around a foot and a half of snow right as the semester was getting ready to begin. Once scooped, the department took it to a contractor who brought it to a rock quarry.

“If we didn't haul it off, there wouldn't be a parking space,” Mack explained. “A foot of snow is a lot of snow, and then it starts to stack up.”

As the snow was removed, leftover snow that had been heated enough to melt in the removal process quickly turned to ice in the cold temperatures. To deal with this, the department uses various kinds of salt, including rock salt and a calcium chloride blend.

Dr. Shadrick Paris, a professor at Ohio U’s chemistry department, explained salt’s effect on water like this: “By adding salts, depending upon what salt you add, water ions break up. So, for example, sodium is actually sodium ions and chloride ions … These interact with water through different intermolecular forces thus disrupting water's ability to bond to one another. What will happen is any sort of salt on the surface of the ice, it will melt locally a little bit. And as it forms that solution, right, then you get that effect spreading through.”

Paris explained that it’s very effective in melting ice, but there are some drawbacks.

For example, as ice on concrete melts, it will funnel through the pavement. That is because concrete is a porous substance, meaning there are small holes. If the water freezes again, it will expand, creating more cracks in the concrete that will eventually lead to potholes. There is no means of preventing this besides not salting roads. 

Additionally, once salt and water mix, it forms a substance called brine. Brine can then sink through the ground like normal water does and enter natural aquifers where we draw most of our water from. 

It can also drain into other freshwater bodies that plants and animals interact with. In large amounts, it can be lethal. 

In an environmentally conscious city like Athens, it’s difficult to know what to do in situations like this. Paris suggested rethinking the materials we make roads with, but doing so would require a complete overhaul of existing infrastructure. 

For now, he thinks the best thing to do is to stay educated.

“We find out, oh crap, we negatively impact the environment. How do we fix this?” Paris said. “And then that inertia trying to get that moving forward, trying to educate the public on why we need to do those things is always the hard part.”