What IS that awful noise? Must be snow!
Photo by makelessnoise 
If you live in a big city like New York, you probably wake up knowing whether it has snowed or not. This isn’t because city dwellers have some acquired sixth sense regarding the mysteries of snowfall-it’s because every neighborhood has that one (or more) early bird who loves to loudly shovel his sidewalk at 6 a.m. It’s an altogether unwelcome harkening of snow’s arrival. Like fingernails on a chalkboard, that spine-tingling scrape can rattle you down to your fillings. If you are especially unlucky (as I am), your bedroom faces the street and that cacophonous sound reverberates through the dawn as if you were sleeping on the sidewalk.
As I lay in bed this morning, bemoaning that awful sound, I got to thinking: What would happen if no one shoveled their snow? Well, things would quickly turn into a great big dangerous mess-that much is certain.
Having grown up in sunny California, this whole snow shoveling thing is fairly new to me, and I wondered what Answers users had to say on the subject. Apparently, depending on where you live, there are specific laws holding homeowners and businesses responsible for keeping their public-access sidewalks free of snow. Many places, it seems, even require snow to be shoveled within 24 hours of a big storm. I found that many of you who rent apartments aren’t sure whether the onus is on yourself or your landlord to keep driveways and sidewalks snow-free. That, too, is dependent on each situation, but the best answer is to check your rental agreement or lease.
For those of you stuck with the painful task of shoveling, I found some great tips to help make the job a bit more bearable. For one, try to avoid lifting and throwing as much as possible-your back and shoulders will thank you for it. The best method seems to be starting in the middle and working your way out to the sides. If you find the snow sticking to the shovel, try using a little car wax, silicone lubricant, or cooking spray to keep things moving. Many of you find that using a snow blower (if you can afford it) is a heck of a lot easier (although no quieter!). Of course, if you are willing to throw a little money at the situation, there are always eager entrepreneurs ready to do your dirty work for you.
Fortunately for me, my landlord takes care of the shoveling. And now that I’ve read up on it, instead of whining about the noise, I guess I should be thankful that it’s not me out there at 6 a.m. making it.
What’s your experience with shoveling snow, and what tips can you share to make the chore more bearable (and less noisy)?
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Even though I don’t live in the city, it snowed lots here yesterday.
Good luck shoveling everyone! I got mine done nice and early.
Kids and teenagers use our front sidewalk on their way to school. We shovel during the day, but can’t get it done by 6:30 in the morning. They just have to walk over the newly-fallen inch or two. Those footprints do make it harder to shovel that afternoon, though.
I agree that pushing the snow aside is a lot less work than lifting and twisting with the shovel. A plastic shovel blade seems to be the lightest.
Able-bodies teenagers could do the world a big favor, and make some pocket money besides, if they had a standing arrangement with some elderly folks to shovel their walk as they passed by on their way to school.
I live in Chicago. And I usually wake to the sound of snow plows in the morning. Its a lot louder and less pleasant then just the one neighbor with his shovel.
that is sooooooooo funny! the little boy is really cute
I’m laughing in my sleeve here in South Africa… it’s the middle of summer down here! And right now, as I type, there’s a veld-fire on the mountain not 5km from my house!
I love the snow and it doesn’t bother me. Snow is excellent for the environment.
Honestly you can’t shovel snow without noises. Unless you use a broom.
I love shoveling snow, it’s an awesome workout.
LOL try haveing your window less then 15 feet or so from the street. they start plowing wayyyy to early..3 to 4 Am.. It frightens the cats.
Since people are required to shovel, then they do. If they have to go to work at, say, 7:00, then you bet they are going to shovel BEFORE 7:00. Welcome to the real world. Shovel and annoy your overly-sensitive neighbors, or don’t shovel and annoy your other overly-sensitive neighbors (and perhaps get a fine from the city).
my building is on a corner, so my landlord has quite a bit of shoveling to do. instead of getting his exercise, (the lease says that he shovels the snow) he brings out a little tractor to do the work for him! i live in my towns center square, and even before six, i am awoken by the sound of snowplows in cadance. man, it’s clean by the time i leave for work!
it’s best to shovel as clean as you can. then, throw down some de-icer to get the stuff you missed up. this is actually required by my town. although they don’t seem to care about the noise.. if you think about it, it’s great exercise, and done regularly, can supplement your exercise routine quite nicely!
Please don’t complain on the noise, why don’t you bother asking your neighbor why he does it so early, maybe you might just learn something!
=D
I live in Winnipeg. I know when there’s snow on the ground – it’s some time between October and April.
And I can always tell when the temperature dips below -35 – my roof makes cracking noises.
Why would you only know this if you live in a big city? There are even more early snow shovelers in rural areas and they get up at 4 AM.
it snowed here 5 days ago
I am from the snowy part of California. I get stoked when I hear the siren of the plows going at 3 am or the sound of my neighbors blower in the wee hours of the morning. That means we got a good dump and the trees are going to be good skiing today. I think its funny Everyone has to have something to complain about. Snow removal is just too loud, it scares the animals or my favorite living in the snow is a lot of work. If we didn’t have snow removal a lot of people and businesses would be getting sued for all of the moronic situations people get themselves in when they walk in snowy conditions.
I LUV SNOW
in my neighborhood we are required to shovel the sidewalk in front of our houses.
the lady who lives behind us even complained about us once. no one likes her anyway.
but its not the shoveling snow that annoys me because the windows are usually closed…..its the people who mow there lawns at 7 am on a SATURDAY!
That sucks, I WANT snow, we rarely get anything down here in Atlanta and when we do it only sticks for a good 5-7 hours.
i am one of those “early snow removal birds” think the earlier the better to push the snow out the way!! don’t forget the salt to melt the snow!!
I live in the ‘burbs of New York City. They do it here too.
I thoroughly agree with Melinda. It’s not snow shoveling that bothers me. It’s the ones that have nothing better to do on Saturday morning, like sleep, than to wake everyone else up by mowing their lawns. So irritating!
What i love snow
Lots of snow? Talk about EAST coast, its crazy down here in Soho. My 3 year old son is actually afraid of snow! Which makes it harder then it should me. Plus, footprints? It making it WAY harder.
Yeah, I hate responsible people!
I live in NW,Indiana and snow is something I guess I’ll never get use to (lol). I hate driving in it,and my job is about 20 miles away. The last few years have produced heavy snow falls,and there are times when it can cover your parked call all the way up to the door knobs. The street dept. use to leave signs on the curb,letting us know when they will plow,so we can move our car,but they don’t do that anymore!. They just plow you in!. I have to get up around 4am,if it snowed heavy that night,so I can dig my car out,and not be late for work. This year we had a couple of ice storms,and the cars were packed with ice,as if someone threw buckets of water on them,and they froze. The streets looked like ice skating rinks. A lot a schools and businesses closed,and the mail did’nt run for 3 days. We were all kind of stuck in our homes. For those of you on this site,that live in Kentucky,I hope everything is well with you and your families. (God Bless)
i l live in a large city and they have plows that do the sidewalks and streets.its great so you don’t have to shovel the sidewalks but bad because you have very large snow mounds you have to shovel to get out the driveway that are impossible to get with a snow-blower. i live in western upstate and we all know how bad we have it here because the great lakes and finger lakes.
I grew up in salt lake city UT close to the air port then I moved out to a rural part of utah it was odd only having the early shovler instead of plows and plain.
I, too, live in NYC. As a homeowner, I am required to shovel the snow, which I do.
Actually, sometimes I shovel the walk past my house and do my neighbor’s as well. But then, sometimes he does mine, too, so it all works out.
On really snowy days, it’s kind of nice. Sometimes I am out shovelling at the same time as both of my neighbors, and it’s sort of fun.
But I honestly don’t know what you are talking about, being woken up by the early morning snow shoveler. I, too, sleep in the front room, where I can hear the street noises, and there are so many more noises out there at 6:30 in the morning I doubt I would even hear anyone shovelling snow! I live on a very noisy block, and believe me, there are much louder things out there!
This is NYC. It’s urban out there! There is noise. It’s just a fact of life!
We have never had snow, all we get it heat!!! I love snow and would be more than happy to wake up to people clearing their driveways. Instead I’ve been waking up to two weeks of temperatures above 43C (109F)!!!!!
Well, where I live we have laws about having it up 24 hours after it stops snowing, and you CANNOT shovel it into the street. Though few people listen, and often the sidewalks become a terrible icy mess, where little kids are trying to walk…
Course, most of our snow is powder, which means it’s like trying to shovel feathers a lot of the time… your best bet tends to be to shovel before it melts underneath.
I’ve been known to shovel at 4am. The ground is cold and so it comes off easily, it sparkles in the moonlight and is beautiful. Most of the time, at 4am though… you can use a broom, and that means far less noise.
Luckily, we’ve had close to NO snow this winter. This is fairly unusual, as the latitude I live at in Europe is the same as that of New York City and it should have been a lot of it. On the whole, I don’t think we’ve had more than 2 inches of snow and it melted quickly the next day. No need for shoveling. Hate that by the way!
I live in an apartment in Chicago, and my landlord shovels our sidewalk, but our driveway is in back and to get out you need to back up into the alley and drive through it to get to the street. Well the city takes care of plowing through the alleys but the excess snow gets pushed onto the end of our driveway. So what I do is I try to back out right over the snow, and when I get stuck halfway through, my neighbor who is always shoveling (even when there isn’t that much snow) comes and digs my car out. After I leave, he proceeds to shovel out the rest of my driveway-Sweet Deal!
I don’t mind the sound of snow shovels, it’s sort of quiet, peaceful, rhythmic and brings back childhood memories of dad out at night after he came home from the night shift. Sow plows, are another story as they never come during the day, only at night when there’s no cars parked on the street. Last night big heavy bulldozers, plows, front end loaders, and dump trucks came to clean up some of the ten foot tall snowbank on the side of our street. They came at THREE IN THE MORNING and it took an hour and half to finish scraping down all the snowbanks on our block. And every time one of the trucks backed up it would go beepbeepbeep. The trucks spent over half the time going backwards. Needless to say, I am very tired and crabby today.
Well I own my own landscaping company and I plow and remover residential snow. If you have a small walk and driveway a shovel is the way to go. If it takes more than 10 minutes with a shovel get a snow blower. You will pay for it but I have found Toro to be the best. Youll pay twice what you would pay for others but it will last you twice as long as well. I just gave away a two stage Toro made in 1984 and he one I gave it to says it runs great. If its light powdery snow the shovel is the way to go as well. To help lessen the shoveling and then reshoveling an hour or two later cause you still had some flurries after you finished. Put down some sort of ice melt and that will keep your walks clear for anything that falls under half an inch. Hope this helps. Remember there is always sledding when all the hard work is done. God Bless.
Don’t forget to put out the salt while shoveling! There is nothing more embarrassing than walking along on snow to fall on your bum due to the snow covering the deathly ice under it.
Big whoop, I get jackasses in military helicopters at 4 am in the morning and all into the day doing God knows what joy riding around despite the base being 25 miles away.
In response to the person from Chicago, yes, snow plowers are quite loud too, i still think shoveling snow is far worse, because this goes on for hrs. the snow plower can get it all up in a couple goes and then the sound slowly disappears. I have this problem too w/ neighbors at the wee hrs of morning. The snow is BEAUTIFUL yes, brightens things up in the winter time, things any nearly as dull, plus lots of fun in the snow, though here where I live we have steps coming down from each apartment and it can be quite dangerous if you’re not careful, so snow snoveling is a must, believe me it is one of the things i hate the most about winter.
I was shoveling snow last week and asked my young children to help me. The older of the two (he’s
stated he found it fun. I guess we can all take note and try our hardest to make a sometimes difficult task a bit more fun. I did find the work went much quicker when my outlook of it changed some. I remember enjoying doing it when I was little as well. I’ve found those shovels with the curved handles are easier on your back and pushing it helps instead of picking it up every foot or so. If you have a lot of snow that’s just not possible though. Snowblowers are a blessing for those that have them.
TOOOOOOOOOOO LONG DIDNT REAAAAAAAAAD
SNOW IS KINDA COOL THOUGH I GUESS
I know what you mean, shoveling snow is irritating and exausting. I just do the steps and behing the cars and I have a hard time doing anything else for the rest of the day. There should be something done about it, like people having a government contract to do so many houses and have a decent pay for doing it, I feel sorry for those with a shovel but is physically or mentally unable to do it.
I live in Erie, PA where we were just accounted to be the 2nd highest in depth.
Use your car to burn the ice. Wait a minute… it cost gasoline…it is bad to the environment, so lets shoveled, that day i am allow to not go to the GYM.
I hate shoveling snow. Here in SE Michigan, a boat-load of snow has continuously been on the ground since December and is jsut starting to melt. It’s been too cold to evaporate until today. Shoveling it was the worst, as it was very heavy. My favorite type of snow (liek there is a such thing) is the light stuff that melts as soon as it touches the ground. No shoveling required…maybe a little salt, though. Shoveling sounds don’t bother me. I’d rather hear that noise than have to walk through 2 feet of snow because people won’t shovel!
To be honest, some days we only shovel one line straight down the sidewalk so people can walk through easily, and that’s it. Lazy, I know, but it’s better than not doing it at all.
Hmm, I never even thought about shoveling snow. That must be an annoying thing to have to do. It kind of makes me understand when people up north say they don’t like the snow, lol.
I live in Marine Park, in Brooklyn. no one is shoveling snow until the afternoon on weekdays and on weekends until it really stops snowing. But snow shoveling is such good business. I am 17 and it can be really profitable now that I am much older and stronger and can do more houses. It is a sort of surburban.city.area .. idk how to explain it. jus residential area and a lot of older people and people who would rather not do it. I love it when it snows.. money in the pocket
Ugh I hate snow!
The scene you described (no one shovelling anything) happened here about a month ago.
What happens? Well, you get a few brave / foolish souls who make the first path to a point where they get stuck (usually on a corner / hill) and they spin their wheels and make the snow melt and polish into ice.
Then as it snows more, the area between the two tire tracks gets compacted as cars push down the snow with their undersides to the point it’s a good place for pedestrians to walk (until a car comes and they scatter like rats in slow motion).
Cars get stuck, trucks drive faster than needed and there are a lot of pedestrian near misses along with many, many flared tempers.
All because no one was willing to do their share of the work, thinking someone else would do it.
Eventually a few of the cul-de-sacs hired a bobcat to get the snow out of the street – he had a LOT of business once people saw he was available for work.
Eventually the semi-sanity of city life resumed.
lol yup, thats NYC alright… and new jersey (everywhere if you know what i mean)
I live in Georgia so…yeah…I don’t really have to deal with this. It’s pretty nice.
Sucks for the rest of you, though.
Heh-heh-heh.
Try living here in Alaska…we have snow from September until sometime in May…
The snow plows get to be a common thing in the morning and to be honest, it doesn’t even wake me up anymore.
for all snow’s haters: we could kick up this global warming thing, and do away with snow all-together. suck it up people! the reason people are out at hours that are inconvenient for you is, that’s when they can shovel! did you ever think that your shovelling around mid-day could be inconvenient to some slumbering 3rd shifter?
snow shoveling is a requirement for most east coast states…deal with it
Haha, it’s snowing now and i already have enough snow to go up to my hip, alot of the snow banks taller then my shed
.
There’s an old Scottish saying, “Why put off until tomorrow what you can do today”? What do you think is better, shoveling a couple of inches of snow every hour or so, or a foot of snow once or twice a day? Some people prefer the former over the latter. Do you know why some cities require property owners and occupants to clear their walk ways? It’s because this society has grown into a selfish self serving and lazy one. There was once a time believe it or not when it was the norm to be responsible and do the right thing. Not today, not anymore. I walk mostly everywhere I go. Even if I decide to take the bus, I have to walk several blocks to get to the bus stop. Say I walk a mile, ten blocks on average; only about 10% of that distance will have a clear path for me to pass through. So…when I hear people like you bemoaning the fact that some people are doing the responsible thing and clearing their walk, so that people like me can pass through unhindered by a foot deep snow fall; I have little compassion for the fool too lazy to get up and great the day.
no shoveling for me!
i just pour some salt wherever i need to get rid of the snow, works perfectly!
I would expect someone from Southern California to be a wuss when it comes to shoveling snow. Do you know why people are out there at 6:00am? So they can avoid creating ice-tracks in their driveway as much as possible when they take their cars out of the garage to go to work. But, of course, when you’re from Southern California, where people show up to work whenever they feel like it, you can leave later so you can shovel later. And, do you know the real secret to shoveling snow? JUST KEEP SHOVELING.
I live in new york city and its been a long time that its been snowing much here in new york city on the bronx where i live. Every time i hear the sound of shoveling on the winter i simply get all excited i look out the window and spread cheers do anyone whose willing to get wet from the snow when they come home from playing with the snow.
I look on the hill on the park near the building i live and i always see children riding the hill even though the temperature is on the single digits or on the teens. I love the snow and believe me i can smell the snow or rain before it comes down minutes later and enjoy that its coming down either fast or slow and see children with their older brother sister or parents either playing with the snow or snuggling each other under and umbrella to prevent from getting wet.
When i hear or see the snow being shoveled from the side walk i think of the people doing a great job because i live near so many rows of stores trying to keep their side walk from being covered by to much snow. Normally the store owner or employees makes piles of snow so that most of the time it can be used for children to play with them while the store owner simply looks with excitement or anger in many cases.
During this month and last month theres has been so much snow then rain and on the morning you hear many shoveling which i like because it calms me. Even during the night i hear people shoveling after 9 pm and the sound of shoveling sounds so peaceful to me because i been hearing people shoveling since i was born. I really love shoveling however breaking your back shoveling for hours isn’t considered loving in anyways until you go inside your home have a nice warm coffee or hot chocolate with a warm soup or dinner on your table after a full day of shoveling.
Your story about snow reminded me of a winter ten years ago. I owned a corner house, so I had TWO sidewalks to keep clear, and in Nassau County they didn’t fool around – you HAD to keep your sidewalks clear or face stiff fines. I was living alone at the time.
I had been hit by a car two months earlier and I was wondering how on earth I could clear two sidewalks because it still hurt me terribly just to shift position, and my back was a mess.
But when I opened my door and looked outside, I saw that someone had shoveled both of my sidewalks clear. I was completely amazed.
I never found out who did it, but I am still grateful to whoever it was.
People like that are angels.
Ha! The secret to shovelling snow is to throw it sideways onto the lawn. That way cars won’t plow it up into your driveway again!