How do we fight snow?

We have a number of weapons in our arsenal to fight the snow on our City streets. For certain conditions and predictions, we are using salt brine (a liquefied mixture of salt and water) for pre-treating our Primary Routes.

During and after the snow event (if temperatures cooperate), we use standard rock salt (Sodium Chloride) spreaders and snow plows. For particularly cold events, we treat the salt with liquid Calcium Chloride. This additive does a couple of things: it helps the salt to stick where we spread it and the liquid helps start the melting action quicker, and liquid Calcium Chloride will melt the snow at lower temperatures than regular salt.