The last snowfall in New York City is fading from memory. It didn’t amount to much — less than half an inch — and didn’t stick around for long.
What did linger was the 28 million pounds of salt that was dumped on the streets that day, causing some people to speculate that there was more salt being spread than usual.
Caroline Ourso, a photographer from the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, recalled being hit in the face with windblown salt as she walked on the Upper East Side. “It was gross,” she said.
“You’re over-salting!” said Cindy Sbiel, who lives in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn, adding: “The snow is not coming yet! Just chill. When the snow comes, then put down salt.”
Ms. Sbiel, 30, said that this winter she had felt that street salt was everywhere — in her 6-year-old daughter’s shoes, inside her first-floor home, in her wig.
Ms. Sbiel’s friend, Lily Roth, said she’d noticed the clothes of her 8-year-old and 5-year-old children sprouting splotches of white.
“I see the salt on their coats, stained,” Ms. Roth said. “And all over their shoes — it has damaged their shoes.”
Despite the splotching and the glazing, the city says it has not changed its approach to salting in recent years. The impression that it has might come from a newish method of preparing the city’s streets for snowfall and a shortage of precipitation to wash the salt away.
What is true is that the salty residue has played havoc with thousands of miles of electrical cables buried beneath the pavement, causing dramatic scenes sometimes caught on video:
Smoke and flames shoot out of manholes as the briny runoff causes short circuits that briefly knock out power in pockets of the city.
“Snow doesn’t cause the problems,” said Patrick McHugh, an executive at the Consolidated Edison utility. “It’s the salting effect and how much the city salts,” he said, describing what happens to the company’s cables when rock salt eats through their outer layers, freeing electrons to run wild underground.
For as long as a week after the salt washes off the pavement, Con Edison crews, working 12-hour shifts, must contend with a surge in the number of cables they have to repair or replace, Mr. McHugh said. The tally of those “jobs” can run to several hundred, compared with 25 to 50 in a typical week, he said.
In one example, an electrical cable caught fire beneath the street near Prospect Park in Brooklyn on Feb. 21, sending flames bursting through a crosswalk. Power was out for most of the day for some residents of the area while Con Edison replaced the damaged cables, a company spokesman said.
That happened a day after the city received a light snowfall and the Department of Sanitation spread those 28 million pounds (or 14,000 tons) of rock salt to melt it.
Before the flakes started to fall, the department sent out its fleet of trucks that spread brine — salt mixed with water — on the pavement.
Brining the streets — that’s the official terminology — is a relatively new practice in the city. A few years ago, the Sanitation Department started pouring the mixture onto the busiest streets if they were dry in the hours before snow was forecast, said Joshua Goodman, a spokesman for the department. Once the flakes start to fly, the city begins to lay down dry salt.
The brine causes snow to melt as soon as it lands, Mr. Goodman said. It also remains on the pavement, visible as a white sheen, until snow or rain washes it off, he said. But if there are no flakes or drops, the brine sticks around.
The department did not apply brine in anticipation of a Jan. 22 snowfall because the brine it had applied the previous week had not washed away, he said.
This year, the snowfalls have been more frequent but not too impressive. The Sanitation Department has recorded 13 “snow events” this winter, but barely more than a foot of snow in all, Mr. Goodman said.
“All these small snowstorms are the situationship that just won’t leave us alone,” the department posted on social media on Valentine’s Day, adding an eye-roll emoji.
The department announced that it would be brining streets and bike lanes that day and would be ready to roll out its fleet of salt spreaders if the snow forecast for the next day materialized. About a half-inch fell on Central Park on Feb. 15, but it disappeared quickly, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The city started the winter with about 350,000 tons of salt on hand, Mr. Goodman said. Its spreaders distribute 10,000 tons — about the weight of the Eiffel Tower — in one pass over the streets, he said. But often, more than one pass is necessary.
If at least two inches of snow falls, the department sends out heavy trucks with plows attached to their front ends. They follow prescribed routes that cover 19,000 miles, one lane at a time, he said.
The department lays salt on virtually all of the streets, avenues and highways in the city, with a few exceptions, Mr. Goodman said. One notable “no-salt zone” is a stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway that is considered especially vulnerable to the corrosion that salt can cause, he said.
Last winter, the department spread salt five times, using a minimum of about 23,500 tons on Jan. 6 and a maximum of almost 50,000 tons on Jan. 17, according to statistics compiled on the city’s Open Data website. But the volumes varied by borough, with Queens getting the most in early January and Brooklyn getting the most in mid-January.
“We look at the forecasts and say, these neighborhoods are going to get more than those neighborhoods,” Mr. Goodman said. “The use of the salt is much more surgical now than it’s ever been.”
Aria Woodley, 37, said she has had to carry her 8-pound dog, Runi, in her arms during walks because the salt on the ground and in the air was so thick this winter.
“I understand it’s a necessary evil, and that the salt needs to be down before it snows,” she said. “But how often are the weather people right?”
Nate Schweber contributed reporting.