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.)"
I've been saying this all week (Score:3)
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Concrete is actually a pretty good insulator. It's the Heat of Fusion that's screwing you over. Imagine dumping your entire tank of liquid propane across the sidewalk and lighting it on fire. It'd burn for a couple of minutes and make the ice slick, but certainly not melt it all.
Salt is really the quickest means of disposing of frozen water. And it's pretty energy-efficient. It just doesn't do the environment much good.
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Using jet engines mounted on vehicles as combination snow blowers/melters has been done [darkroastedblend.com](those crazy ruskies...); but fighter engines aren't exactly known for their fuel economy.
For the suitably well-heeled, thermostatically controlled resistive heaters, cast into concrete or buried under a
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We must have ruskies working for the MBTA then.
Snowzilla [boston.com] has been in use for years.
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Flamethrowers, hell. Use explosives. (Score:2)
Heard about a guy who used primacord to shovel his sidewalks.
1) Run a length down the middle of the sidewalk.
2) Set it off. WHACK!
3) Result: Clean walk and two piles of snow beside it.
4) Profit?
5) Try to explain this to the BATF(E) and DHS.
6) Collect a free Club Gitmo T-shirt.
Haven't tried this myself yet, so can't tell you whether/how well it actually works.
Probably won't,either, since the Supreme Court seems unlikely to extend District of Columbia v. Helle
use steam! (Score:3)
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Penn State also was pretty good about having the steam pipes follow walking pathways/sidewalks. Every once in a while, there'd be a grate in the sidewalk pouring out heat. Pretty cool when you're too broke to buy proper winter clothes...
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When I lived in NJ, I install a solar water heating system on the roof of the home, I had it build during the summer when I was rebuilding my home, slight a bit OVER-SIZED and it worked well. One trick that I added to the system was simple, I had an engineer figure out how to plumb the stairs, sidewalk, driveway and used the solar heated water to warm things a bit.
Well it worked rather well, all I had to do was to flick a switch in the morning, the sidewalk would get a slightly warmer, when the snow fell i
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Didn't you have any problems dealing with the melt water? I would think that the water would just re-freeze when it runs off the heated part.
This doesn't seem to happen - it evaporates (Score:2)
Didn't you have any problems dealing with the melt water? I would think that the water would just re-freeze when it runs off the heated part.
Since we just had a major snowfall in the Chicago area, I'd just point out that I have piles of snow next to my driveway that are at their highest almost 6ft tall from clearing the driveway and sidewalks. It's not possible to clear the driveway of snow and ice completely, due it not being perfectly flat.
I cleared the driveway down to about 1/2 an inch of snow, and spread salt on it.
My driveway is now dry - not covered in either ice or salt water - there is a dry salt residue on it.
The water didn't run off,
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:Dumping snow in the river (Score:4, Informative)
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In most cities, when the snow on streets/sidewalks melts, the water and contaminants don't go into the river, but go into sewage where it's filtered and otherwise treated before reaching the river.
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Actually, in most cities the storm drains aren't connected to the sewage system, they're separate pipes that usually drain unfiltered to a nearby body of water like a river.
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While the desire to keep pollutants out of the waterways is a noble one, storm drains in Boston empty directly into the harbor, or Charles River (which empties into the harbor). The drains are even labeled with warnings about this.
The whole "we don't want to pollute the harbor" line people hear from the city every winter makes sense until you realize that the pollutant-filled runoff is going to end up in the harbor anyway.
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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?
Imagine you're a fish in that river, then ask yourself whether you'd rather want a few weeks of melt-water filtered through the ground seeping into the river, or tonnes of snow dumped on top of you.
From a more human point of view, there's also the possibility of snow causing blockage. If the river is cold, the snow won't melt immediately, and can cause ice floes.
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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.
One of the things that always boggles me about winter is that there is no addition of cold in any meaningful way, negative thermal energy not really existing; the world (well, hemisphere) gets substantially colder because it continues losing heat at the same rate it does in summer, but now it's not being replaced by the sun. All of those huge waves of warm and cold air that we live or die by are inefficiencies in heat getting from the ground (or anywhere else it's absorbed) to space.
Makes the world, and hu
The land filters the snowmelt (Score:2)
CT Homes have 4-5ft deep piles. (Score:2)
I'm not sure what we will do if another 12" falls.
Although gasoline and flamethrowers would just lead to fires, I've wondered what a 100K BTU industrial propane heater would do. (Picture below.) Has anyone tried this?
http://www.globalindustrial.com/p/hvac/heaters/kerosene-propane/propane-heater-forced-air-50000-btu?utm_source=nextag&utm_medium=shp&utm_campaign=Propane-Kerosene-nextag&utm_term=245995&infoParam.campaignId=WI [globalindustrial.com]
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Unless you get out there and start pointing this thing all over the place, it'll melt a nice straight line somewhere.
And, you said 100k, but this is 50k. Was there a 100k model somewhere?
Now if there was an oscillating version!
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Simple... The snow melts, the water flows a few feet out of the path of the heater, and freezes solid, exposing you to potential liability if someone slips and breaks their hip.
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"...if someone slips and breaks their hip."
Use the flame thrower on them before they sue. With a broken hip, it's not like they can run away.
Re:CT Homes have 4-5ft deep piles. (Score:5, Informative)
CT Homes have 4-5ft deep piles.
I'm not sure what we will do if another 12" falls.
As someone who grew up in an area that managed not to call 2 feet of snow a national emergency (which is about all it takes to create 5' piles), you take the new snow and throw it on top of the pile. Or, if necessary, you make the base of the pile bigger. If really and absolutely necessary, you pile the new snow into a sled and pull the sled into the middle of the lawn and dump it there. Sometimes the answer to a difficult problem really is just to work a bit harder. Sad but true.
Shortage of imagination is a THREE way street. (Score:2)
Pile snow on trucks and move it to a larger lawn. That's what we do in my home town when snow is 2 meters deep.
And yes, it's actually cheaper than melting it. I've calculated it once just for fun.
that's not a torch, THIS is a torch! (Score:2)
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How do we deal with snow that is regularly more than the "snowpocalypse" currently in rest of the country? We have "snow plows" and "snow blowers". You may have heard of them. They push the snow out of the way and pile it up out of the way. It all mel
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OT: I've noticed a lot of people using this word "whinging" lately. Is it an intentional misspelling of "whining"? Why is it so popular?
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I picked this up from my Brit friends and like it better than "whining"
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100k BTU/Hour = 105400000 Joule/hour
105400000 Joule/hour / 333550 Joule/kg = 316 kg/hour
316 kg/hour * 1.04 liter/kg = 0.33 m^3/hour
assume a uniform thickness of 0.25 cm for the ice and a width of 3 m for the sidewalk; that's 0.0075 m^3 of ice per meter of length.
0.33 m^3/hour / 0.0075 m^3/m = 43.8 m/hour.
That heater would take an hour to clear a tenth of an inch of ice from in front of one building.
New snow has a density typically about 10% that of water, so a tenth of an inch of ice would be about one inch
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I've wondered what a 100K BTU industrial propane heater would do.
The water equivalent of the recent snow in Chicago was reported to be 1.5"+/-, that's about 7.8 lbs / sq ft.
It takes about 144 btus to melt a pound of snow, if you assume 32F ice and 32F water.(the current temprature is about 20F and you need more than 32F water to keep it melted, but I'll ignore that.)
So, if I did my math correctly, you would clear only about 90 sq ft per hour with a 100,000 buth heater. (It's btu/hr, not btu. Sorry for the pedantry, but it bugs me when people drop the "h")
That's not v
Call the deathray kid (Score:5, Funny)
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But you aren't adding any more heat to the system as the sun is already hitting the snow; you are just making it warmer on one place and colder in other places. You also risk having the melted snow refreezing as ice once you move the deathray to another location. I wonder if there are inexpensive ways to change the albedo of snow, like sprinkling soot on the snow that would help in addition to salting it to lower the melting point.
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I wonder if there are inexpensive ways to change the albedo of snow, like sprinkling soot on the snow that would help in addition to salting it to lower the melting point.
On a small scale, yes. My parents (living in Maine) use a woodstove to heat the house. They use the ashes to melt the ice at the base of the front steps.
You would need a lot of ash to make a dent on a snowbank though. And that much ash is a huge mess in the springtime.
Snow Gnomes Business Plan (Score:3)
Step 2: push snow off pier into ocean
Step 3: ????
Step 4: PROFIT!!!!!!
-Runz
this reminds me... (Score:3, Funny)
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You're modded funny, but sometimes reality is unrealistic:
"The Engineers teamed up with more than 1,000 District of Columbia employees to clear the inaugural parade route. Luckily much equipment and some men had been pre-positioned and were ready to go. In the end the task force employed hundreds of dump trucks, front-end loaders, sanders, plows, rotaries, and flamethrowers to clear the way."
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/capitalweathergang/2009/01/inauguration_weather_the_case.html [washingtonpost.com]
Re:this reminds me... (Score:5, Funny)
I remember reading about that, but I don't remember which president it was for...
That's right..you don't.
Signed,
The Secret Service
this isn't more outlandish than "snow melters" (Score:4, Funny)
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136 tonnes (metric, likely) of snow times 333.55 joules/kg to melt it is 45.3 GJ/hr
a gallon of gasoline gives about 125k BTU per gallon, which at 1054 j/BTU is 132 MJ/gal.
45.4 GJ/hr / 132 MJ/gal = 344 gallons per hour of gasoline.
How big is 136 tonnes?
Well, if one lane of a road is 10 feet wide, and the snow is 1/10th the density of water (which is typical for new snow on the ground), a foot of snow is 0.28 m^3 per linear foot and that weighs about 28 kg. 136 tonnes would then cover 136000/28 = 4850 linear
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Hauling the snow away also burns fuel. I imagine in some places the snow melters might actually be more efficient.
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Correct. Melting can be more efficient than hauling the snow somewhere in a truck. Also, snow removed from parking lots and roads isn't exactly clean. It is full of trash and pollutants. The snow-melting rigs will filter the water before discharging it.
Giant halogen heaters FTW (Score:2)
Why you don't want to melt the snow (Score:2)
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Energy efficiency (Score:2)
What does it take to melt one kilogram of snow vs shovel it up and truck it away? The latent heat of fusion of ice is 335 kJ/kg. So what does it take to truck it away? This would depend in part on the packing density of the snow.
And don't forget the teamsters wages for plow/truck drivers vs the Flame Thrower Local contract terms.
Snow Melters (Score:2)
Most snow melters work at very high thermal efficiencies (90 - 98%). Typically, one ton of snow requires 1.5 US gallon of diesel to melt. Remember, snow is not ice -- it's far less dense.
http://www.snowmelter.com/en/snowmelters_faq.php [snowmelter.com]
Snow melters can melt anything from 20 to 5000 tons of snow/hour, depending on their design capacity. Airports already use this technology extensively -- it's nothing new.
http://www.snowmelter.com/en/clients.php [snowmelter.com]
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Oops I meant 500 tons/hr, not 5000.
1960s Sno-Melter illustration and article (Score:2)
Check this supersonic fantasy machine: http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2010/12/16/the-sno-melter-1960.html [paleofuture.com]
Already doing it? (Score:2)
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Not really melting the snow, though it does do that a bit. It's mostly used like a humongous leafblower to simply move the snow.
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We appear to be operating with different definitions of snowblower. Technically, the jet trucks do blow snow, but a snowblower, at least by Canadian definition, uses an impeller or auger and impeller to move snow.
The Fitth Element (Score:4, Funny)
Snow Melters (Score:2)
Most major northern airports have snow melters that do exactly that, melt snow. They work pretty well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNERNVAlAMo [youtube.com]
Of course, we can't have our railways held hostage by snow either, in that case, they just strap a jet engine onto a rail care and melt snow that way. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5OrCCGV6hg&feature=related [youtube.com]
Where there is a problem, we'll find a solution!
Of course! (Score:2)
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?
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flamethrowers? how about jet engines on trucks: (Score:4, Informative)
the russians don't mess around when it comes to snow removal. they take a klimov vk-1 jet engine from a mig-15 and strap it on a truck, amongst other eyebrow raising configurations:
http://www.darkroastedblend.com/2009/08/jet-engines-on-trucks-for-fun-and.html [darkroastedblend.com]
i think i would step a little livelier if i saw a snow plow like that coming at me down the street
Possibly off topic, but I have to say it (Score:5, Interesting)
Something about letters from that era that are just so simply elegant. I love reading letters from that time.
It's been done before (Score:4, Interesting)
The night before John F. Kennedy's inauguration in 1961, a snowstorm dumped 8 inches of snow on Washington DC. The Army Corps of Engineers worked franticly, using flamethrowers to clear the streets. Click here [washingtonpost.com] for the full story.
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Can't dump it? (Score:2)
So, federal law prevents them from dumping the "contaminated" snow in the Charles river, or the harbor. What I would like to know is this: where do they think all that snow is going to go if it melts on its own?
Whatever happens... (Score:2)
He needs to make sure these "Engineers" are properly licensed.
Or else he would have had to write another letter.
The actual letter is fairly reasonable (Score:3)
While it sounds funny, when I actually read it my thought was "he seems like a reasonable man."
He saw something happening, used his past observations to predict a likely outcome if no action was taken, realized this outcome would be dangerous to the people he was sworn to protect, and then asked people who are smarter than he is what he should do to prevent or reduce the bad outcome.
He gave them some ideas that he had come up with and asked if they were worth investigating. While they may have been silly ideas, at least he had the common sense to ask smarter people for help figuring out what to do instead of just pursuing whatever boneheaded idea he came up with. Does anyone remember the recent "possums released into NYC to deal with rats" story?
I think we could use more public officials like this guy.
1948??? A new low... (Score:4, Funny)
This a new low, even for slashdot. I know stories are late here, but 1948???
Next on slashdot, an article about how scientists are developing this interesting electronic device called a "computer" and how it will revolutionize the world.
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The Sun is ineffective at melting the snow.
Higher air temperatures melt the snow.
If you've ever lived somewhere that gets snow cover and then arctic high pressure fronts you'd know that snow and clear sunny days equal record low temperatures.
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.
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Re:My Theoretical Response (Score:4, Funny)
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Ash isn't too environmentally unfriendly
That depends [google.com] on how much ash is used.
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I was referring to ash from burning, which is quite a bit different than "coal ash". Isn't coal ash a petroleum compound? fire ash is mostly just carbon.
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Other than posing some dust irritant/inhalation hazard when airborne, reasonably pure carbon black could b
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Fog is best.... (Score:2)
Short of bright sunny and 80F (which is unlikely in February in the Northeast), warm air (> 30 F) and fog is most effective at melting snow. The fog acts as a reasonable thermal conductor accelerating the snow melt. Surprising, rain is lousy at melting snow and just creates a mess. Cold and bright sun does melt some snow--especially if it's been plowed and is on blacktop (aka asphalt or bituminous concrete). Overtime, the snow also compresses so it appears to be melting.
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And. . What warmed the air currents?
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Yes, and the reason is that most of the heat delivered by the sun goes into heating the ground, which heats the air next to it by conduction. Some solar energy gets absorbed by the atmosphere as it passes through, but not much.
When the ground is covered in snow, most of that solar energy gets reflected right back into space and fails to heat the ground.
A flame thrower would indeed melt snow, but at great expense. You're transferring heat across a large temperature differential, which is one of the classic
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Given the fact that they're facing similar problems today, we can conclude that MIT failed t
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WE dont, the only reason we have these problems are cheap bastards against spending taxes.
IT is trivial to make roadways heated to keep ice and snow buildup down. Many large corporations and rich people have this already. Problem is a bunch of idiots whine like babies if we spend tax dollars heating sidewalks and roads in the cities.
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You do realize that heating up a road surface requires an ungodly amount of energy, right? That's why only rich bastards and megacorporations can afford such things. To say such astronomical costs could be covered by taxes is like saying we could all be chauffeured around in Bentleys on taxes.
Re:Overkill, but... (Score:4, Interesting)
Tell you what, I'll tell them to go ahead---- And send the bill to you.
Cute - you want a public service, but payment should be provided only by those who admit that it's necessary. Just pretending you don't need it - but happily benefiting from it - means you get to leach of other people who are more honest. Is that the idea?
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Chicago probably goes a bit overboard because of our history with snowstorms (the short version: the story goes a mayor lost reelection because of how he was perceived to handle a snowstorm), but we had close to FIVE HUNDRED vehicles deployed in this storm.
It was something like 350 special-purpose trucks, the ones with the huge plows on the front, the dumptruck full of road salt and the salt spreader at the back (which damages roads other vehicles, by the way) and an additional 150 or so garbage trucks th
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The problem was solved a long, long time ago [bensstudio.ca]. Modern vehicles can even be adapted to the same basic design [desktopnexus.com]. There is really no reason for a little snow to scare anyone.
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We actually have invented two transportation methods that are easy to keep running regardless of how much snow is falling / has fallen...
The subway and elevated railway (el). The biggest problems are when the lines transition from elevated to underground, and any surface portions.
An elevated line could run through most of the worst storms we've had. All of the wind that causes snow drifts that wreak havoc on roads actually clears el tracks. The open nature of the track bed on els allow for any buildup to
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They aren't melting the snow, although that is one of the side effects. They are using the engines to blow the snow away.
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What a shame, those engines really belong in a museum. They are Mig-15 engines [wikipedia.org] which have centrifugal compressors and are similar to the first British jet engines [wikipedia.org] developed in the early 1940s. Actually, from the outside, these look a lot like the De Havilland Ghost [wikipedia.org].
The Mig-15 used ttechnology the Soviet Union got from the British during WWII. During the Korean war these centrifugal compressor engines were already obsolete and the Mig-15 was inferior to the American F-86, powered by the axial flow J35 engine [wikipedia.org]
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