Dano62

Paved driveway, pretty rural/recreational area, no industrial activity anywhere nearby. Our road is a private paved road that only gets plowed (no salting/sanding). Even the public road that our road connects to only gets plowed and sanded (no salt). My wife and I often won't go anywhere for days, so it's not like road salt is getting transferred in. Also, I only use the snow blower on a paved walkway and the upper part of our driveway (places I can't really get at with my snow plow). Not really into the conspiracy theory stuff, but it does make me wonder if they're putting shit in the air. Cloud seeding isn't exactly a well kept secret.

Maybe I should just forget about the lab, bag it up, and sell it!

Here we are, almost a year later. The last snowfall we got, about 8 inches, was driven by a strong northwest wind (not off the ocean). It had been blowing hard northwest for a number of days prior to the storm. The amount of the white flakey material left after the snow melted off my snow blower is pretty significant. A friend of my wife has a cousin who works in a lab and can test it to see what it is.

I touched a few flakes to my tongue. It was bitter, not salty. I'll see if I can get a good photo tomorrow and post it. Thanks guys for chiming in.

It does look like salt. We're exactly 20 miles inland from the ocean and 750' above sea level, which I suppose in the big scheme of things isn't that far, or too high in elevation. The funny thing is, these are my first two winters living inland. The rest of my life was spent living less than 2 miles from the ocean, and I never saw this before. Maybe I'll put some on my finger and touch it with my tongue. Will let you know the results of my unscientific test.

New to the forum. I'm 62 years old, have lived in Maine my entire life, and have never seen what I describe following. We live off a paved private road. The road gets plowed during/after snow storms and no salt (or equivalent) is used on the road. We've never used any type of salt/snow melt on our paved driveway, or anywhere on our property. Last winter, and this winter, after I have cleaned off our vehicles with a shop type floor broom, and have snowblowed our walkway/upper driveway, I put them away in our garage. After the remaining snow melts off of them, and the water evaporates, there is a flaky white residue left where the snow melted. It has to be something that binds to the snow flakes as they fall, but I can't for the life of me figure out what it is. Any ideas? Maybe I don't want to know!