But they don’t actually turn it to steam – just melt the snow into water, which is then dumped in the gutter to go down the street drains (assuming they aren’t frozen). And that portion of the street/gutter ends up pretty icy after the unit leaves.
Minneapolis has a few of these. But they are much slower than plows, and way more expensive to operate. They are used mostly in downtown commercial areas, to clean snowpiles on corners and such – places where there is a lot of pedestrian traffic and very little space to pile snow.
Years ago, city trucks used to dump snow right into the Mississippi River, or on a riverbank alongside to wait for the spring melt. But that was stopped because of pollution concerns. I never really understood that. Doesn’t the snow melt in the spring just go down the drain gutters and end up in the river anyway? Without going through any treatment? So what’s the difference in dumping it right into or alongside the river right away? Seems like that would spread it out over time and reduce the chances of spring flooding.
You are completely correct. I don’t know why I said they turn it to steam. I mean, some of it turns to steam, but most of it is turned to water. There was even a small issue because it (IIRC) is technically illegal to melt the snow into the storm sewers and to add to that the airport is owned by the county. But they had to do something since the snowbanks were starting to clip the airplane wings. What I never understood is why they didn’t just get some bulldozers and push the snow back further onto the grass. I’ve spent almost my entire life looking at this airport. There was a lot of snow and it was piled high, but it didn’t appear to me to be high enough to justify the cost of renting these machines.
Typically when it there’s too much snow the city will start scooping it up and dumping into unused area around the county. We have a giant, convenient lake nearby, but like you, they can’t use it for dumping snow into. I think it’s for pollution concerns as well. My guess is that it’s more to do with litter then anything else, and as long as they have these open areas where the snow can just dissipate into the ground they’d rather pick the garbage up off the dirt then fish it out of the water come spring.
That’s a lot of vehicles and time and manpower. I’m lucky if they plow the streets just once in my town which got a foot of snow last night.
The plow didn’t come down my street until 2pm. It didn’t remove most of the already compacted snow and ice on the road, but it did block all of our already shoveled driveways with hundreds of pounds of blocks made of dirty compressed snow and ice.
If people used sleds for transportation that might work. We’ve had 50" of snow here in Boston which would make rolling the snow (which is what they used to do before cars and plows) impossible to drive through.
The danger with windrows is that with a sudden spike in temperatures, followed by a sudden drop, the windrows can freeze into unmovable rows of ice. I used to direct the snow removal operations on two military runways; we were always careful not to let the building of windrows outrun the the slower snowblowers by too great a margin, as freeze/thaw cycles were common in New England. There’s nothing quite as colorful as a squadron commander who can’t launch his aircraft.
The real answer to the parked cars is to simply use a much larger snowplow that pushes all the snow & wrecked cars onto the sidewalk, leaving all lanes of the street clear. On-street parking in snow country is an idea so bad that any snow clearing option is just loaded with adverse side effects. Eliminate the on-street parking & the problem becomes managable.
Add a nuclear snow melter & you’re totally in business.