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Bud--

HeyBub wrote:
wrote:
We just got something like 7 feet of snow and the drifts are up to 25
feet. I was wondering what all the banging and popping sounds were
until I figured out it was car tires blowing out from the weight of
the snow on top of the cars. There's a large parking lot nearby and
all I've been hearing are tires blowing. Some of the louder sounds
have been buildings collapsing and I can see several homes and
businesses gone in the piles of snow. It looks like the tire companies
are going to be real busy in the next few weeks.

If your tires have not yet blown, shovel off your cars. That's if you
can even get to them safely. But dont risk your life for a set of
tires. Besides it could already be too late. It's likely that your
car windshield and/or the roof of the car may also collapse or burst,
and it may already be too late, particularly if the tires are blown.

Heavy, wet, snow weighs about 20# per cubic foot. Assuming your car is 8'
wide and 16' long, one foot of heavy snow would be almost 2,600 pounds.

That would be an additional 650# per tire.

We had one building collapse in MN - a flat roof hardware store. A news
station talked to a structural engineer. The design roof load for snow
is 35 psf in Minneapolis. He said that is about 6 feet of snow. (The
design load is higher further north.)

The hardware store collapse made it on the national news. Multiple
building collapse plus many car tires is a much bigger news story.
Anyone seen it? Was anyone hurt in the multiple collapses where the
building is "gone"? Where did the OP say this happened?

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bud--