1948 Mayor To MIT: Use Flamethrowers To Melt Snow? 203
An anonymous reader writes "In 1948 Boston mayor James Curley freaked out because of the record amounts of snow. He wrote to MIT and begged for help, even suggested using flamethrowers to melt it. (Check out the original type-written letter.)"
Dumping snow in the river (Score:4, Insightful)
When the snow melts, the contaminants are going to go into the river anyway, so why does it make sense to ban dumping the snow in the river?
Anyway, in my thermodynamics class back in college, one problem we were given was to calculate how much energy it would take to melt all the snow across the campus. The thermodynamics does not work to the advantage of economically getting rid of the snow using flamethrowers.
Re:My Theoretical Response (Score:5, Insightful)
The reason sun doesn't melt snow too fast is it's white. Sprinkle a little black ash on it and watch it just sink. Dirty snow always melts faster.
They could just be sprinkling ash around on the snowbanks and huge snowpiles to get things melting faster. Such a simple idea, I don't know why they're not doing it. Ash isn't too environmentally unfriendly... certainly better than all the salt they're using.
Re:Overkill, but... (Score:0, Insightful)
Tell you what, I'll tell them to go ahead---- And send the bill to you.
Wait - they can't dump it because of contaminants? (Score:5, Insightful)
So, they can't dump it into the river because of contaminants, but instead they'll wait for it to melt and wash into the river?
Am I missing something here?