Sneaux next week [Historic snowstorm in southeast Louisiana on January 21, 2025]

Doug B said
This is one thing I've always wondered about:

What kind of physical condition do you have to be in to be able to shovel a driveway full of snow? Seems like once your body started converting from "young person" to "middle aged" that shoveling snow would become too hard to do for many people.

And I gather you might have to do it once or twice a day for several days running? Sometimes?

I also imagine that shoveling off a driveway would take some time ... maybe an hour for a few inches to several hours for waist-deep snow. About right? Or is it faster going than I'm thinking?

Also, what's the "eff it" point where you just commit to staying indoors for the duration and thus give up on shoveling anything? Waist high? Higher? Lower?

(Man, people moving from the snowless South to a snowy clime must really be lost with this stuff for a while)

For my LA brethren and sisteren (and I know Marsha doesn't need this advice), if you are shoveling, do your back a favor and push the snow. Don't shovel it except where you have to. Even the light, fluffy stuff will wear on you after a while, and the wetter, heavy stuff is no joke. Best thing to do is cut a small path first to shovel enough to give yourself a clear pathway and then push everything from there.

For example, I have a rectangular driveway that ends at my garage. I start at one corner and cut a path to the street down one of the long sides. Next, I come back up and clear enough from in front of my garage to get to bare concrete. I then start at the intersection of the bare spots and go side to side with the shovel width about 1/4 to 1/2 way into the shovel. Push from there with the shovel slightly tilted toward the snow and you'll pick up enough snow to fill the shovel. You'll figure out pretty quickly how far to start the shovel to wind up with it full enough. Rinse and repeat. So much easier than trying to fill the shovel and throw it.

Side note, when you get to the edges after pushing, you may have to lift it a bit to get it all off the driveway. No big deal - just break it down into a couple of shovels and you'll be good. Just don't try to throw it.