This time Toronto went through a harsh winter, where the snowfall has exceeded the average snowfall (133 cm [Environment Canada] by almost 70 cm, totaling about 200 cm of snow. This winter has almost beaten the record of the 1938-1939 winter record of 207.4 cm; we were just about 7 cm short this time! Wow!
Particularly interesting is the fact that all this snow fell not continuously over the period of three to four months of winter, but rather in sort of discrete lumps. And what a lump each one of those was! At times, we could see no snowfall for a week or two, but then a major snowstorm would come and paralyse the entire city. For example, it was sometimes in the early February, when we received some 35 cm of snow over the course of one evening and one night! If you think about it, that’s about 10 hours of snowfall, with about 35 litres of snow per every square metre in an hour! Now, I have about 220 square metres of paved walkways and driveways, all of which require shoveling. I am sincerely afraid to calculate how much snow I plowed that morning! (that’s close to 8000 litres, those brutal 1.3 tonnes!!!)
Here’s a short video about, made by someone. “It is pretty,.. but not fun to shovel” — absolutely agree :)
Now, as the winter has passed, potholes on the roads happen to be a big problem in Toronto, as they do in Maine, the US (here). But local services here in Toronto came to recognise the fact, as there is now a hot line for all Torontonians, where one can call and inform them about a spotted pothole. The services then must fill that pothole up. Moreover, if one feels that his car was damaged because of a pothole, then one can send a request to a local court about the matter and deserve a proper compensation.
A local TV network decided to make a research about how effective this service really is. What they did is they chose 10 potholes around city, they photographed and filmed them. Then they called this city service anonymously. The city promised that any pothole will be filled within a week (I think) from the time of the call. So they checked a day before the deadline, and all 10 potholes were already filled quite firm. They gave 10 out of 10 to the city :)
I am not so sure how the compensation stuff goes ;)
