The Mountains of Winnipeg

[imec]

This may come as something as a revelation to those who think of Winnipeg as a flat, prairie town. There are in fact several mountanis in Winnipeg such as this one:



Oh, perhaps I should mention, the mountains are seasonal - they start to spring up around December, peak somewhere between February and April and then gradually decline until around August when they disappear nearly all together. The "mountains" are found at Winnipeg's Snow Disposal Sites.



As our winter temperatures here stay mostly below freezing between December and April, snow which is ploughed off the streets collects in high banks at the roadside which must be removed for safety reasons. The hard packed snow from the banks is collected by front-end loaders and transported by large trucks to these sites, where bulldozers push it up to the top of the mountains. By August, the snow melts completely leaving behind a pile of sand.

[Deleted]

Fascinating! Even more so because I always think of Winnipeg as being in a more or less "drier" part of Canada (as opposed to Ontario or Québec) so I am amazed that that much snow builds up duing the winter.

Does the melt make an official stream that goes somewhere? A lot of the mountain brooks in the Alps or Pyrénées only run until the last of the snow has melted in the mountains, so this must make a pretty good stream, too.

[bjd]

Can you at least ski on them?

[Deleted]

This IS fascinating and difficult for me to wrap my head around...
Is the area restricted Imec? Should something like that have been around when I was a child,we would have been all over those "mountains",with sleds,those saucer like things we used to go down icy hills in...We did it on a golf course,which was restricted,but,never stopped us...

[cristina]

Amazing, imec! And I have the same thoughts as casimira. What a fun place that would be to go sledding!

Its too bad the snow can't be easily exported to the Olympic skiing venues.

[lagatta]

In general the Prairies are drier, but they also get more months of ... er ... Siberian cold, except in parts of Alberta where the snow is melted by the warm chinook wind (there is a thread on this topic, believe existentialcrisis started it). We have mountains like that here too, in remote corners of the island, but they aren't very big this year as there have been several melts and not a lot of snow.

A lot of Prairie people don't like our winters, or even the far milder southern Ontario winters, because the weather is much damper.

Of course when it melts it isn't all clean sand, but all the crap the snowploughs and snow removal trucks (the snow is blown onto them by something akin to a leafblower) suck up with the snow - rubbish, dead cats and the odd child - I am being a bit facetious there but several people have been killed by the snow removal crews, who drive like cowboys.

Wouldn't the runoff go into the Red River? (a very big river, and notorious for its springtime floods).

[imec]

To answer some questions...

Manitoba, dry??? The province contains approximately 110,000 lakes - one of them, Lake Winnipeg, is the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world covering more than 24,000 square kilometers and is only 55km from the city of Winnipeg. The city itself is crossed by 3 rivers - the Red, the Assiniboine and the Seine. Precipitation in the Winnipeg area averages 525 millimeters per year including about 125cm of snow.

Some of the snow piles are situated on or next to river banks so the runoff goes directly into the river. This particular one, while not near any of the rivers is close to a Nature Centre which contains several small lakes - I suspect the runoff is directed this way.

As for skiing, sledding etc.... First of all the sites, while not high security areas, are not open to the public and there are active with heavy machinery around the clock. More practically though, the stuff piled here is not really "snow". By the time it arrives here, it has been driven on, packed by ploughs, packed again when piled into the trucks and packed once more by the bulldozers. The final result is an almost rocky surface which would be entirely impractical (not to mention dangerous, painful etc.) for winter sports. Having said that, there are numerous venues both official and casual for winter sledding. Here are some pics from the web of sledding sites:

[lagatta]

I think the friend who used to live in Toronto and now teaches in Winnipeg calls the latter "dry" because of his perception of less humidity in the air - or perhaps just because winters are much colder? (He is originally from Ottawa, which has practically the same climate as we do in Mtl). Guess the provinces west of Manitoba would be drier (because of the Rockies).

Yes, we've discussed Manitoba's many lakes - including very large ones, and huge Lake Winnipeg - in other threads. Isn't a lot of wild rice harvested in Manitoba?

The first slide is very impressive indeed... I have a bit of fear of heights, so I think I'd skip on it.

A bit of pedantry for imec. I said "in general the Prairies are drier" (in general, Prairies, drier) not Manitoba = dry). Think the only semi-desertic area in Canada is in southeastern BC, and it isn't truly arid.

[imec]

Ah, I now see where I may have created some confusion. Manitoba - the land is wet - but the air is relatively dry. Humidity levels are typically lower than the Toronto area for instance both in summer and in winter.

[spindrift]

Well, blow me down, that first mountain looks like a real one. I was completely fooled.

Thanks, Imec, for this most interesting thread.