Slush, "snumps" and "slush bombs"
I know all about slush (see yesterday's post), and I've been familiar with the "snumps" so elegantly named by Michael Enright and Jane (whose last name I can't recall) on a CBC program a few years ago. Snumps (snow lumps) are the dirty blobs of snow that fall behind cars as the temperature rises. They are formed when the fresh snow comes unstuck from the metal of the wheel wells.
But slush bombs? They seem to be a new weapon. The story on the front page of The Vancouver Sun, complete with video, reports that these 'slush bombs' endangered drivers and damaged vehicles. This happened yesterday on the new $3 billion Port Mann Bridge during the first snowfall of the year. Lumps of ice rained down from the cables, smashing windshields and mirrors, even crashing through a sunroof to injure someone.
This is weird. We have other suspension bridges in the area -- notably the Lions Gate, built in 1937. No ice bombs fell on it. And we also have the huge Alex Fraser Bridge, much newer and longer that the one across the First Narrows, and it too seemed to be slush bomb-free.
To add insult to injury, commuters had just started paying tolls for this newly completed and much-touted crossing of the Fraser. Then yesterday it proved to be a minefield (mines from above).
The builders of the bridge are throwing up their hands, using a modern paraphrase of the Act of God argument: the conditions were rare, and it could happen to any man-made structure.
Only it didn't. It just happened on the New Port Mann. Even though the whole region had more or less the same weather. Maybe those soaring post-modern cables are too numerous or too steep.
Meanwhile, the story made the Globe and Mail too. Engineers are looking at ways to stop the bridge hail from happening again.
But slush bombs? They seem to be a new weapon. The story on the front page of The Vancouver Sun, complete with video, reports that these 'slush bombs' endangered drivers and damaged vehicles. This happened yesterday on the new $3 billion Port Mann Bridge during the first snowfall of the year. Lumps of ice rained down from the cables, smashing windshields and mirrors, even crashing through a sunroof to injure someone.
This is weird. We have other suspension bridges in the area -- notably the Lions Gate, built in 1937. No ice bombs fell on it. And we also have the huge Alex Fraser Bridge, much newer and longer that the one across the First Narrows, and it too seemed to be slush bomb-free.
To add insult to injury, commuters had just started paying tolls for this newly completed and much-touted crossing of the Fraser. Then yesterday it proved to be a minefield (mines from above).
The builders of the bridge are throwing up their hands, using a modern paraphrase of the Act of God argument: the conditions were rare, and it could happen to any man-made structure.
Only it didn't. It just happened on the New Port Mann. Even though the whole region had more or less the same weather. Maybe those soaring post-modern cables are too numerous or too steep.
Meanwhile, the story made the Globe and Mail too. Engineers are looking at ways to stop the bridge hail from happening again.