New England ice - Jet Blue spins on landing

[Bob Eisenman]

The Boston news networks made a pre-holiday news story about the arrival of a ship load of tons of road salt, the size of the 'Chelsea' salt pile offloaded from the ship and the reassurance that holiday and mid winter transit woes due to hazardous road surfaces should not be of concern by commuters.

http://whdh.com/news/crews-preparing-for-1st-plowable-snow-of-the-season/

"Between 120-140 cities and town across the Bay State get salt from the Chelsea salt pile. Each shipment drops 50,000 tons of salt at the pile." (From Chile?)

http://whdh.com/news/icy-conditions-snow-impacting-holiday-travelers-in-massachusetts/

"Dump trucks continued " " in and out of the salt pile in Chelsea, prepping the roads for slick conditions."

The news story started to lose its calming effect when a 2:00 am fire truck responding to a fire in the Boston area community of Waltham skidded off the road and came to a stop against a utility pole.

http://boston.cbslocal.com/2017/12/23/waltham-fire-engine-crash-icy-roads/

"The truck hit a patch of ice and crashed into a utility pole, bringing down wires."

I went to Boston on Saturday and at the end of the afternoon the weather born rain and ice had encrusted the twigs of the leafless trees along the sidewalks which were equally layered with ice where shop owners had not applied some salt. 

On Christmas morning the roads were glazed with both significant snow, ice and road treatment salt. The thought of removing the snow and ice from the couple dozen wooden steps leading to my second floor apartment came to mind. A quick look out the kitchen window didn't show any accumulation on the visible hand railing so I put off the thought until later in the day. When I decided to complete the snow removal task several hours later in brighter daylight I was surprised to find a quarter inch thick layer of ice encasing the entire wooden step structure. The ambient daylight had warmed a thin layer of water atop and below the ice but removal of the ice was not possible with a shovel in temperatures hovering around freezing. My supply of rock salt ran out last year and the walk to the store a long block away (to buy more) gave way to using a several pound mallet, a wide flat metal claw bar and a broom to 'impact-scrape off-and brush away' the adherent ice from the the steps. Job done...problem solved.

This morning, the day after Christmas,  a news story about a 7:00 pm Jet Blue flight landing at Boston's Logan airport on Christmas day which hit some ice and skidded off the runway was being reported. The jet actually spun and ended up pointing in the opposite direction.

http://www.wcvb.com/article/plane-slides-of-taxiway-all-of-a-sudden-it-started-fishtailing/14497047

"Flight 50 from Savannah landed at Logan Airport, hit a patch of ice and began to skid. It spun around as it slid, finally coming to a stop facing in the opposite direction.

"Coming down the runway and all of a sudden we started sliding and spinning and spinning and spinning. And ended up in a snowbank," said Jerry Hokansan, a passenger from Martha's Vineyard. "