Uh, Michigan checking in. We definitely care about the temps when salt stops working.

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RosyClearwater@reddit

This isn’t really true. Montana has some wild temperature swings in the winter. That said, we use a mixture of gravel and ice when it’s really bad.

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Same in Minnesota, and it's not uncommon for a heavy snow to hit, followed by days where temperatures are well below 0F. It usually results in shoveling, having your sidewalk/driveway be damp from partially melting snow, and then whatever being left freezing into black ice for days.

Rock salt by itself also helps provide some traction on slick surfaces, and is usually mixed with a bit of sand to further help this. One of the towns I used to live in had a pile of sand/salt mixture in a gravel lot that residents were free to come fill up buckets with in the winter.

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therealgookachu@reddit

Are you old enough to remember the winter of 1995-1996? Highs weren’t above -20, and they stopped trying to ice, and instead were dumping massive amounts of gravel to try to grind down the ice on the roads.

OftTopic@reddit

Water frees at zero Celsius.

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urnbabyurn@reddit

Salt water. That’s what they are talking about.

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OftTopic@reddit

Salt water freezes at 28.8 degrees Fahrenheit.

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squarebodynewb@reddit

The salt serves 2 purposes when you DE-ICE with it.

Salt absorbs moisture so can help make slick wet ice less slick as its at melting temps.
Ads gritty texture to the surface of the ice while its frozen, meant to keep you from sliding.

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FartCartographer@reddit

For home walkways I’ve been told to use kitty litter but that seems wasteful or something. I usually have the privilege of just waiting out the worst of it at home and just walking very carefully

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happygoth6370@reddit

My town did a great job salting and sanding the roads this past winter. Now there's so much sand, you can send your kids out with a pail and shovel to have a beach day lol. Patiently waiting for street-sweeping day.

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tcarlson65@reddit

That is why you buy a product that works at below zero temps. No one in the snow belt in the U.S. is applying salt.

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TheGrandAdmiralJohn@reddit

That’s why you buy subzero ice melt!

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IndependentMemory215@reddit

It isn’t like table salt.

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Redwings1927@reddit

Its not the lack of friction, its the lack of visibility. I can walk safely on ice if i see it and know its there. Ice i cant see is far more dangerous because i cant see it.

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TrashtvSunday@reddit

Well, I can't. When that snow turned into a block over ice three days ago that had melted just a bit and the refreezes every night, it's just as slippery as it can be. If you have to walk up steps to your porch and that's what's available to walk on... how else do you get to your front door?

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Jdevers77@reddit

Every once in a while I have been on the roads really early in the morning after a snow when the snow removal and treatment trucks haven't made it to all the roads yet and you're driving like 5 mph and sliding sideways... watching cars spin off the road into ditches. There's a reason they treat the roads😆

I am thinking he's the same guy that rents the rear wheel drive option car at the airport to drive up I 70 to go skiing because he thinks as long as he goes slowly and carefully, he won't slide off the road anyway.

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Lunakill@reddit

He’s every jackass that has slid into me and then been annoyed with me because it’s not his fault.

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Lunakill@reddit

Do you understand not everyone can magically “walk carefully” and not fall just because ice is visible? I’m thrilled that you can. Congratulations. My elderly father had fallen twice on visible ice this year. I eat shit about once every five years. Your experience is not universal and arguing as if it is is silly.

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Jdevers77@reddit

Look, no one is saying ice isn’t dangerous. It clearly is, only you are arguing that hidden danger is somehow exactly as bad as obvious danger.

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Redwings1927@reddit

how else do you get to your front door?

Realizing that reading about ice temperature may be difficult for a competitive figure skater, here is a video for you to watch.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHGW-PIG0TI

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dwyoder@reddit

JFC, of course they are the same rinks, and maybe for practice time they don't change the temperature, but for competitions, the ice temperature matters.

Learn something today, okay? Is two sources enough, or would you like me to provide more. I can even teach you how to use Google, if you want to do it yourself. I will await, but not expect, your apology.

https://wissota.com/ice-temperature-affect-skating/

If you don't completely scrape all trace of snow from your driveway - and this is very difficult to do, since you have to do it within a day at the most and it can be a physically taxing effort - the surface of the snow will slightly melt from the sun, some days, and when the evening comes, it turns into ice. This is more common with global warming, because the weather is unstable.

Salt breaks the ice, making it more rough, instead of an ice skating smooth one. Sand alao makes it less slippery.

Ice is be a real issue, especially for older people or people with mobility issues. Even younger people can get injured if they fall.

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Zealousideal_Lab_427@reddit

We use a subzero ice-melt on our stairs, driveway and sidewalk. It really works well! It’s magnesium mixed with another element. We try to always use the paw-safe version, as every other house in our neighborhood has a dog.

MissMarionMac@reddit

You open the front door. You look outside. If there is ice on the ground, you spread the ice melt. That's about how complicated it gets.

No good answer for frequency in America.

In Alaska it's probably weekly for 9 months a year.

In Florida it's never.

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Gertrude_D@reddit

My parents lived in Alaska and one of the things they loved was that the snow didn't do that melt/freeze cycle. Once the snow was there, it stayed til spring.

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Helpinmontana@reddit

I used to live high in the mountains in Montana (now I live in the valley)

My truck didn’t have heat, so when I kicked the snow off my boots it accumulated in the footwell. I used to have to chip the ice out of my footwells so the pedals could move, because the temps never came high enough to melt the ice.

Nowadays I just scorn my neighbors with their south facing driveways. If I skip shoveling once we get ice for a month. Salt doesn’t lower the freezing point of water enough to matter when you live in a cold enough climate, so we just throw sand ontop of the ice to make it grippy.

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oitef@reddit

My sister lives in Alaska and she swears Iowa winters are worse than Alaska bc of the ice and wind

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Gertrude_D@reddit

Exactly what my parents point out. They were in Fairbanks, so sheltered from the wind and never any ice. You can dress for the cold better when you’re not also fighting that wind that blows across the Plains with nothing to stop it.

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RupeThereItIs@reddit

I'd also suspect much of Alaska reaches temps where they'd put sand on the roads over salt.

duckfruits@reddit

Salt prevents water from freezing into ice.

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Queasy-Extension6465@reddit

Why are people calling the salting process Ice? I've never heard that in snowy Minnesota. It's called salt as ice is what we trying to prevent or melt away.

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Whateversclever7@reddit

Salt will melt ice, this is not exclusive to America, it’s just science.

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Slight_Manufacturer6@reddit

Everything has been answered but to add to how often, it depends on temperature and the snow.

Some areas are just fine after the snow if it is cold enough not to melt and the snow is fluffy.

When the temperature has been fluctuating around freezing it can allow it to melt and freeze more than if it is colder.

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Salty water has a lower freezing point than non-salty. So putting salt on ice will generally melt it, and putting salt on the road before any snow hits it can keep it from freezing to begin with.

This only works to a point, since if the temperature drops below the freezing point of salty water, it will freeze anyway. (0° F was actually originally defined as the freezing point of the saltiest water Mr. Fahrenheit could make)

Nowdays a lot of people use magnesium chloride as opposed to pure salt, which is the same stuff they spray on airplanes to keep ice from building up on the wings.

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Ok-Possibility-9826@reddit

Because snow melts ice.

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2outhits@reddit

Salt melts ice. It's basic physics. What do they teach down there?

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RodneyBarringtonIII@reddit

Hey, give the guy a break; he's probably never even seen naturally formed ice in real life. When I lived in Northern California I brought a car that had spent most of its time in the Midwest, and every time I got an oil change the mechanic would call me over to say, "idk what the hell you've been doing to this car, but a vehicle shouldn't have rust on the bottom."

It was just the normal wear and tear from driving on salted roads in winter. More than one of them told me that salting roads isn't a thing. Evidently some Americans reach middle age without realizing that the United States spans vastly different climates.

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Capable_Suit_7335@reddit

Salt = melt

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RickySlayer9@reddit

Salt melts ice.

while the sun melts small amounts of snow and the water freezes at night into ice, which can cause you to slip. Salt it, and you have no issues

How often? Depends on how much rain, or snow you get, and temp. Basically salt when it gets icy

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hollowbolding@reddit

the more stuff is in water, the more impure it becomes. *pure* water freezes at 0c+stp, but any gunk that's in it -- salt, alcohol, soap, etc -- means that it needs to be much colder to freeze. by salting the ground we create an environment where the temperature needs to be lower in order for ice, which is now based in saltwater, to form

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BoulderNerd@reddit

Keeping the pavements clear of snow is usually sufficient where the winter sun reaches (at least in the semi-arid SW US), but in the shady areas you might need salt if there is runoff that froze to ice that you can’t clear mechanically.

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When snow melts and mixes with components of sand or salt, it's freezing temperature is lowered. So instead of having sheets of ice on our sidewalks, paths, and streets, it stays wet, which means significantly fewer cases of folks spinning out on black ice, having slip and falls, or getting into car crashes because of ice.

I live in the Denver Metro area In Colorado. It is very common for us to have snow, then a beautiful day where the snow melts (but stays as standing water,) and then a temperature swing back down to freezing. But because the water has mixed with the salt, the freezing temperature of that is now closer to -9°C, so it doesn't freeze and cause issues.

Places that regularly reach -9 (including my area) also have other types of salt that make the freezing point even lower.

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Cinisajoy2@reddit

I have salted my steps maybe 6 times in 20 years.

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Weightmonster@reddit

Have you ever encountered black ice?

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Weightmonster@reddit

Salt and whatever else is ok road salt, melts ice. (I forget the chemical reason).

Yep. You may see people talk about the USA having a "rust belt." They all refer to the northern part of the US, primarily the upper middle and east part of the country. It has multiple meanings, here are two:

1) Road salt and driveway salt are used extensively, leading to premature rusting on cars. Old cars in the south or southwest are desired because salt use is uncommon.

2) Old industry was concentrated in these regions. Steel works, nasty smoke belting factories and so on. Many of these buildings are now abandoned derelict piles of rust.

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thewags05@reddit

I don't think this is nearly as much of a problem as it used to be. Now that most panels aren't steel and the undersides are typically covered in panels. I hadn't seen nearly as many rusty cars as I used to in the midwest and northeast.

We're not "iceing" the driveway, we're salting it. Putting down ice melt.

The salt melts the ice so no one falls down

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Lower_Neck_1432@reddit

I would have thought it obvious...it melts frozen ice, ice that causes cars to slip when driving up and down driveways and persons to fall and break bones.
It needs to be done when the temperature goes below 0 deg Celsius.

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Phoenix_Court@reddit

It melts ide, and prevents ice from forming. How often just kind of depends.

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bren3669@reddit

unless you’re trying to turn your driveway into a skating rink, you doesn’t want to ice it at all, hence the ice. The ice melts the snow and ice, de-icing the driveway.

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Particular-Move-3860@reddit

What is this "spreading rock salt = icing" business? I'm not acquainted with that equation.

Icing is what you trowel onto a cake.

To prevent slips and falls on pavement and steps following a period of sleet or freezing rain, we throw down some rock salt or sprinkle on some ice melt*. (Ice melt is calcium chloride.) This is only necessary if the air remains humid but cold after a snowfall, i.e., (F°) within a few degrees of freezing, or (C°) a couple of degrees below freezing. (Where I live the wintertime air is much colder and drier, so this precaution isn't routine. Surfaces that have been cleared of snow are dry as a bone most of the time.)

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Here in Maine, the deer and moose are sometimes out in the roadway licking up the salt. I don't try to hit them in the face with a snowball, but it's tempting. 😁

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DogsBikesAndMovies@reddit

When I was getting my degree in anthropology, studying wild monkeys in Bali, they often licked walls. We thought that was weird, until our professor explained to us that salt is rare in their diet, and all primates need a certain amount of salt, and there was salt in those walls.

Humans have a basically non-stop source of salt, but it's not true of all mammals, and so sometimes gotta lick pavement.

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BrilliantDishevelled@reddit

Salt also releases heat when it changes from solid to liquid. It literally melts snow from this.

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Not_an_okama@reddit

If the area is cold enough for the salt to be ineffective, we put down sand instead. If you cant melt the ice, do something to give it more grip.

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Odd_Cabinet_971@reddit

I appreciate seeing a literal use of the phrase "to a certain degree" today.

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-TheDyingMeme6-@reddit

Do you want to slip on ice and break your Entire Ass Knee? Or your tailbone? Or your wrist? Because not salting the driveway and sidewalk is how you end up with a shattered knee.

Just ask my mom. She was getting out of the car at a Christmas event and shattered her knee. Had to be in a cast for 6 months

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49JC@reddit

The positive charges of Sodium and the negative charges of Chloride disrupt the hydrogen bonding between water molecules. This will lower the freezing point of the water nearby preventing the driveway from freezing over making it dangerous.

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This-Reindeer6063@reddit

It wards off ice.

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WritPositWrit@reddit

Where i live we get A LOT of snow and it stays well below freezing most if the winter. I never salt my driveway.

If the snow doesnt melt, it wont turn into ice. Because to have ice, you have to first have water, and to have water, you have to have melted snow. If it stays cold, the snow doesn’t melt.

We do get ice sometimes, but we just walk carefully. Have i slipped and fallen in my own driveway? Yes.

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BigPapaJava@reddit

Sprinkle salt on an ice cube sometime and watch what happens. The chemical reaction melts the ice.

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tultamunille@reddit

We try to use alternatives like sand as much as possible, as Salt runs into lakes and damaged ecosystems. It also rusts cars.

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pastrymom@reddit

It’s often called ice melt. The signs behind it is it raises the temperature in which ice will form (I think anyway). When I lived in the north, we probably put that stuff out once a week until it got too cold to work.

I now live in the South. So glad we don’t have to do this. If we’re lucky, it will ice once a year for a day.

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12B88M@reddit

What you're actually seeing put down is "Ice Melt". It's essentially calcium magnesium acetate. It has a freezing point (temperature) of approximately -18°F (-27.5°C) at a 32.5% concentration.

You shovel the sidewalks and driveway clean then sprinkle these crystals around so they can start dissolving in the small amount of remaining snow and ice. As the ice melts it quickly evaporates in the dry winter air leaving a dry and non-slip surface.

Then, we got something that we get called freezing rain which is where it is just at or just above freezing temperature in the air, but the ground is still colder so it is frozen, and water falls from the sky like regular rain but then freezes as soon as it hits the ground. Instead of melting the snow, this rain stuck to the snow and froze more on top because there was already a hard layer of ice on top of it from where it had thought a little bit and frozen again during the day. By the next morning, everything was covered with ice.

So when I tried to walk across my grass to get to the mailbox the next morning, there was a thick crust of ice on top of the snow and I tripped and fell. My hands went through the top of the ice that was about half a centimeter (1/4”) thick into the snow, and because the ice broke off, it was very sharp, and shredded my hand. Cut right through the skin and flesh like glass.

You dont HAVE to, but if there is a chance of melted snow re freezing, you may want to. I only salt if I have older guests coming over (basically when parents come over for christmas.) If you stay on top of shoveling, the sun will usually take care of whats left.

People who salt religiously end up getting really bad concrete. It eats away over time.

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Salarian_American@reddit

It really depends on your specific situation, too. For example, the driveway at my house is just under 75 meters long and it's a hill. If there's even a little bit of ice, I simply can't drive up my own driveway. So I could leave the house, but I couldn't come back.

And waiting for the sun to melt everything might mean that I have to stay home for a week. I tried to just let this happen once, but just when it was about to be safe to drive on the driveway, it just snowed again instead.

So I end up having to salt more than I'd like

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BoopleSnoot921@reddit

Because I don’t want to slip and break my tailbone walking out to my mailbox in the winter.

Shovel snow, follow up with salt if icy (it’s not always icy especially in the dry Midwest but when it is, you salt).

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Stop_Already@reddit

It’s a long science answer about salt breaking water into its separate ions so it doesn’t refreeze. This site has a good explanation.

https://www.britannica.com/story/why-does-salt-melt-ice

I can tell you this isn’t a uniquely American thing, tho!

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Far-Drawing-4444@reddit

The salt melts the ice.

Scientifically, salt lowers the melting point of ice and the freezing point of water. It lowers the molecular cohesiveness. This is why freshwater lakes freeze much easier than do oceans.

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getElephantById@reddit

FYI, the salt they put on sidewalks and roads isn't table salt, it's usually something like magnesium chloride. Those chemicals lower the freezing point of water, attract moisture from the air (deliquescence is the term), and even produces a little bit of heat when it dissolves. So, basically, it prevents snow from turning into slippery ice and causing accidents.

You salt if things are icy. The salt would keep things melty on that spot so you probably would have to keep applying it.

I don’t put salt on my scooped driveway or sidewalks unless there is ice on them.

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EmperorGeek@reddit

Salt water has a lower freezing point than fresh water. By putting salt on a driveway or sidewalk you prevent ice from forming on the surface.

It’s hell on the yard grass, but mars for safer walkways.

Our local municipalities actually spray brine (salty water) on the roads before predicted snow storms for the same reason.

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Antioch666@reddit

The salt lowers the freezing point of water. It does not "heat" the ice and melt like many think. It creates a brine, "chemical solution" that remains a liquid at temperatures lower than the 32F/0C that would normally freeze water.

It is also exceptionally good at rusting cars...

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warrenjt@reddit

Salt water has a lower freezing temperature than fresh water. Salting the driveway or sidewalk or roads then allows the ice and snow to mix with the salt as it melts, thereby having that lower freezing threshold.

PolyglotTV@reddit

Salt lowers the freezing point of water

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Tim-oBedlam@reddit

There's a problem with road salt in that it gets into lakes and rivers, which isn't great for the local ecosystem.

We use grit - basically dark-colored gravel - for traction, as our walkway from our house to our garage is shaded and gets very icy. It doesn't help melt ice much but makes it easier to walk on.

If it gets really cold, like you-will-never-experience-this-in-Australia-level-cold, salt doesn't work, but in temps that cold, snow that falls is very light and easy to clear. The problem then is "black ice" where car exhaust freezes directly onto the road; it's very hard to see, and if you drive over it with your car you can immediately start sliding.

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Cant-think-of-a-nam@reddit

Because snow turns to ice and you can slip and fall so putting down salt prevents that from happening

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Lugbor@reddit

Salt lowers the freezing point of water, making ice less likely to form. Rock salt, which is typically used as an ice melt, also adds traction if the ice has already formed.

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LomentMomentum@reddit

Depends on the location. In very cold areas, snow doesn’t melt quickly, so there’s less of a need for salt.

oldjudge86@reddit

Not to get political but, if you Google "ICE agent slips on ice" you'll find several answers as to why we need to do that. A lot of people have stories of having to literally crawl up their driveway after work because things iced over so much they couldn't stand on it. Lots of broken bones from slip and falls in the winter. A few years back my dad broke a rib falling on the ice, he was complaining to the doctor about being more fragile with age (he was 70) and the doctor told him he was the fourth broken bone from ice he'd seen that day (in a small town) and that the last two were guys in their early 30s.

As to how often, it's depends on how often it ices over but once a week is average for where I live. Here in Minnesota, sometimes we'll get ice storms where we get liquid rain that freezes to the ground on contact, other times we'll get rain that turns to snow which almost always leaves a layer of ice under the snow. Also, we get warm days where the snow starts to melt, makes everything wet then, it freezes into ice again and has to be dealt with.

Walk on ice

Now, run on ice.

After falling down about a dozen times imagine how difficult and dangerous it would be to drive on it. The ice melt dissolves the ice and makes it easier and safer OP.

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53mm-Portafilter@reddit

It lowers the freezing point of water, which means that it needs to be much colder to freeze over.

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Familiar-Kangaroo298@reddit

I know you are just curious, so take what I have to say with that in mind.

Salt lowers the melting point of water by a few degrees, helping it to melt. It's common to sprinkle it on icy surfaces where people will walk.

I rarely sprinkle it on sidewalks or my driveway after shoveling it, though. Only if it's icy. That often happens if it rained before it turned to snow. But if it just snows I shovel or snowblow to the actual sirface and let the sun melt and sublimate it.

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briank3387@reddit

These days, a lot of people don't even use salt anymore, they use calcium chloride, which melts the ice even better than the rock salt. You'll also see people use sand, which does not melt ice but adds some traction to prevent slipping. Salting is done after shoveling, and repeated if it doesn't do a good enough job melting ice after the first application, generally if the weather doesn't help with melting via sunlight or warmer temps.

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showerbabies1@reddit

Salt lowers the freezing temp of water, thus making it less likely that ice will form.

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Aggravating_Goose316@reddit

Salt causes a freezing point depression in water, making it harder to freeze, as well as providing traction. Salting occurs whever it snows, but is most prevalent in the Northeast and Upper Midwest, where snowfall tends to be especially saturated.

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Anachronism--@reddit

There is rock salt and also various chemical mixes that claim to work better than rock salt or be pet safe.

You usually don’t need it for driveways and walks if you can scrape all the snow off and there will be a little sun to melt what’s left. But if there is freezing rain, wet sticky snow or well below freezing weather it may be needed.

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