Slosh means Spring!

It isn't officially Spring yet. The Meteorological Spring in Finland starts when the 24hr average temperature climbs above +0°C. In Oulu that happens sometime mid-April. Right now, when the nights are -15°C or -10°C, just a few hours above freezing in the afternoon are not enough to bring the average up.

There are some signs of Spring even on the bikeway. On sunny spots there's some slosh. And there's even the odd puddle here and there.  And where the snow plow men kept the plow too tightly on the ground there are some patches of brown, dead grass visible.

The snow plow men have been busy scraping the extra ice off, and pushing the snow banks further away from the bikeways. Look at the photo below: the snow banks is more than a meter away from the edge of the asphalt. The meltwaters hopefully will sink into groundwater instead of making puddles on the bikeway. Of course, the ground is frozen solid so it'll be a while until the water can sink anywhere.

I read on the newspaper the other day about several cars driving into the ditch because the snow plow men had lost the road under the ice and snow and just plowed somewhere where they thought the road might be. The end result was that the "plowed road" was partially over a ditch...

Snow banks pushed away.

Here's what a street looks like after Ice Scrapers have scraped the ice off. There were some parked cars so they couldn't scrape everywhere. The ice left on the street is about 20cm thick, and the chunks on the pile are mostly 5cm thick with a few 10+cm pieces thrown in.