In the summer, Davis and his team reseal driveways, fill cracks in the road, and paint stripes onto parking lots. In the winter, he relies on plowing snow to make money. At the start of the season, he gathered up customers, and said he’d take care of their driveways when it snows more than three inches.“I was out there, every snowflake, with my tape measure in the snow, like, ‘Oh, we're at an inch and a half. It's almost time to go out!’” he said.
Davis charges per visit. If it snows a foot, he can make a few thousand dollars. He says it’ll take about four snowstorms to see a return on his investment in the plow, and another five storms for the truck. But for much of the winter, it’s been raining instead of snowing.As climate change warms up winter, puddles are increasingly common. Mary Stampone, New Hampshire’s state climatologist, says there are more and more days when it’s not cold enough to snow.
“A lot of people, when they have these huge snowstorms, they say, 'How can it be global warming?'” she said. “Well, that's exactly what's expected under global warming, because there is more water vapor in the air to come down as rain or snow.” Concord, where Davis lives, has already lost about a week of snow cover in the last 50 years, according to the state’s. By mid-century, the area could lose more than a month of snow cover, if we continue burning fossil fuels as usual. A reduction in greenhouse gas emissions could reduce the loss of snow, according to the report.