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1948 Mayor To MIT: Use Flamethrowers To Melt Snow?
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'd like to head out there and just use some brush burners to get rid of the snow on my driveway.
Dear Mayor Curley,
Thank you for writing us. Our engineers are hard at work on a brand new invention called THE SUN that will shortly eliminate all the snow in Boston, and indeed the entire state of Massachusetts. We also have our physicists at work on a little something called the LAWS OF THERMODYNAMICS that will ensure that the snow melts slowly enough not to cause a flood; as opposed to all the snow melting simultaneously.
That's like trying to use a frickin' flamethrower to melt snow....oh wait. :D
don't cities like this have steam plants with steam pipes through significant portions of the city? divert some steam to melt some snow
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.
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
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Tell him we need a giant version, STAT.
MG
It might seem like overkill, but really why with all of our advances in technology do we still have to deal with such simple problems? It is obvious that a major factor in our economy staying on track is based on transportation working near 100%, so why do we still get plagued so often even from weaker weather? I am guessing that some corporation doesn't feel it is yet "profitable" enough to worry about solving.
Kill it with fire.
"You're awefully cute, but unfortunately for you, you're made of meat."
Check this out: http://www.automotto.org/entry/in-russia-jet-engines-go-to-work-as-snow-blowers/
I was told that in the old days over at the local base (Selfridge) the river formed an ice-dam and parts of MtClemens were getting flooded. The boys at the base allegedly made a bombing run to clear it. If anyone can confirm this, that would be cool.
Well, the letter says they're worried about the flooding of domiciles, was this fear unfounded?
Step 1: build pier into the ocean
Step 2: push snow off pier into ocean
Step 3: ????
Step 4: PROFIT!!!!!!
-Runz
Doesn't the Secret Service have a supply of flame throwers they've used in the past to clear out streets when the president is suddenly snowed in somewhere? I remember reading about that, but I don't remember which president it was for...
Wouldn't napalm be much more effecient??
Many cities use snow melters to deal with snow; that's basically the same thing. I really wonder why environmentalists aren't up in arms about it; the snow melters can burn hundreds of gallons of fuel an hour, which is more fuel than it takes to a heat a house for a month.
Please help metamoderate.
I live in an area that was buried under 4-6 feet of snow over night back in December. The city I live in borrowed special trucks equipped with a flame device from the City of Toronto to melt snow in the down town area instead of trying to load it on to trucks with Loaders and haul it out and dump it some where. So, ya it's perfectly reasonable...
Kill all the snow with fire!
I think a slightly more sensible version of flamethrowers would be to use giant halogen heaters in place of streetlights, and feed them megawatts of energy. Quite apart from solving the snow problem, we could even keep our streets warm that way for people to walk along generally.
Why OpalCalc is the best Windows calc
How about those NASCAR jet engine track dryers.
Now get off my freshly melted lawn.
No brain, no pain.
The snowblower was invented in Montreal, for a good reason: they get lots of snow, and it stays in place until March. Hence the city has come up with an almost militaristic solution. It involves giant snowblowers, dump trucks, blinking red lights, and looking for your car (which is not where you parked it) after the city crews come up your street: http://chicagomontreal.blogspot.com/2006/01/snow-removal-in-montreal.html
Okay, let's say you melt the snow with a giant flamethrower. Then what do you do? Move on to the next patch with your giant flamethrower. What happens to the first patch that you burned the crap out of? It re-freezes, not into another snow drift, but a sheet of ice several inches thick.
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.
Have gnu, will travel.
Check this supersonic fantasy machine: http://www.paleofuture.com/blog/2010/12/16/the-sno-melter-1960.html
That reminded me of a post on Gizmodo awhile back where someone was already doing that.
I first watched this film in German ... and then I watched it later in English ... some guy (with a brilliant Texan accent) traded some guns with flame throwers and nets to some creepy crawler alien folks for stones which they didn't have. It's a hoot and a half!
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Most major northern airports have snow melters that do exactly that, melt snow. They work pretty well. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNERNVAlAMo
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
Where there is a problem, we'll find a solution!
Maybe this is what the mayor had in mind. http://www.bjs.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?catalogId=10201&storeId=10201&partNumber=P_117833646&sc_cid=EE20110127:56
What could possibly go wrong?
"Do the Right Thing. It will gratify some people and astound the rest." - Mark Twain
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.
This sounds rather unlikely, as what lunatic is going to run the risk of putting an airframe in the sky with explosives on it instead of just delivering them from the ground? It's not like there's any need for a deep strike mission!
She melts all the stuff in the frozen foods section, should work for snow as well.
I just heard yesterday that some city had these - the plowed snow is loaded into these haulers, the compartment where the snow is has heaters to melt it (possibly propane-powered? electric?), and the truck has a hose for drainage. The truck takes its load away from the street it was plowed from, drives over to a sewer manhole, and puts its drain tube into the manhole to drain away the meltwater. Apparently this was on TV recently - Discovery? - and it sounds like the answer to me. No long delivery to a remote pond or lake, no pollution of a pond or lake, and no ice formation from the melted water as it streams away.
Somewhat less exciting than flamethrowers though. What if there was a frozen person under the drift - a flamethrower would scorch them and make identification that much tougher, as well as giving the snow-removal crew nightmares. Ick.
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?
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
i think i would step a little livelier if i saw a snow plow like that coming at me down the street
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
howabout one meellion B. T. U.s ?!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Something about letters from that era that are just so simply elegant. I love reading letters from that time.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Not all drains go straight to the nearest water source. It's possible it goes through a quick treatment first.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Did it work? Because Texas hasn't discovered the greatness of Salt or Deicers yet.
My college is experimenting with conductive concrete to not only transmit power through the roads, but to help melt snow/ice on roads/bridges
http://www.conductive-concrete.unomaha.edu/
If the mayor wanted to get the best use of MIT, he could just send naked pictures of Seven of Nine to the entire student body. The heat from so many nerds spontaneously combusting would be more than sufficient to melt the snow.
There's an extremely long history of people considering that actions that lead to a bad result are bad, while inaction that leads to the same bad result is much less bad. I'm not saying it's a logical mindset, but it is very definitely how humans think. A common example, when ethics and economics people talk about this, is: if you push someone in front of a train you're a murderer, but if you don't pull someone who is on the tracks off, or signal the train to stop, you're merely a selfish bastard.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
Call Al Gore, he can fix it! lol
Given the fact that they're facing similar problems today, we can conclude that MIT failed to come up with anything useful in response to the mayor's query. It would be nice to know what their response was, if they responded at all.
It's actually an interesting read: http://libraries.mit.edu/archives/exhibits/curley/index1.html; the link contains the original letter AND MIT's response.
tl;dr: Here's a summary of the response (dated Jan 28, 1948)
I lived fairly far up north. My dad had a Flamethrower sitting above the work shelf. He had used to it to remove large amounts of snow (and quickly dry) large metal machinery. Last time I saw it used was in the mid-1990's. Worked like a charm and we where able to do repairs out side on metal machines at -20. You needed all the ice melted on metal machines to be able to undo bolts and things. The big plus was that the metal was warm for a few minutes after. Nice when you had to do fine work with no gloves on.
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 for the full story.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
We're talking about snow from roads, parking lots, etc, which is much more contaminated than the average snow. If you let if melt with the rest of the snow, the contaminants will be diluted, rather than dumped in the rivers or ocean all at once. Also, I think that significant amounts of the snow run-off (along with contaminants) would be absorbed and filtered through the ground.
Everything is better with flamethrowers. Even flamethrowers are better with flamethrowers. And flamethrowers with flamethrowers are awesome if you put flamethrowers on them.
Geeks are so full of shit that "beating the crap out of them" takes a whole new meaning.
I wonder if google was even deployed to answer this question.
We missed the expected 30 cm of snow...perhaps you borrow ours?
http://www.toronto.ca/transportation/snow/torontomelt.htm
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
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
You can do this if you have a large lawn. What happens in a large urbanized area where you've run out of places to pile higher?
This is what the TFA was talking about.
Yes. When the snow melts, all the shopping carts and tires and hubcaps and coffee cups and plastic bags will stay where it is, and can get scooped up.
The original letter AND the reply from MIT are posted here.
How long until a flame thrower lingers a bit too long on a patch of asphalt and the road starts burning? I guess the added fire would help clear the snow, though.
It is unwise to ascribe motive
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, it evaporated, probably due to the very low humidity of the air.
Putting moderation advice in your
Get Chuck Norris to stare at the snow. It will melt.
They should wait a few years and suck it upw with nuclear powered vacuum cleaners
Main reason which is self evident : salt work EVEN AT NIGHT. Meaning you can spray it at 4/5 in the morning and have citizen a ice free street.ASh not so much. You have to wait for sunrise and it freeze again at night.
In addition in no particular order :
1) salt will stop ice reforming so quick, and particularly surface ice (ground below zero, water on it => surface ice nasty to walk on). You don't sprinkle salt on snow to melt it, you sprinkle it on ice/compacted snow before it become ice. The salt is to avoid sliding on foot or on car.
2) Ash make everything with a dirty muck , which the city has to remove, particularly it could block canalizations.
3) carbon rich ash is black. Normal ash is gray , light gray.
I am sure there are a lot of other reason. I think the above are waaaaay enough to stamp your idea as "not so good"
Yes you are. Water that goes down the drains in the streets is not supposed to go unprocessed into the river. How you, or the guys in TFA does, I don't know, but that's how it is in any reasonably developed part of the world.
Move somewhere warmer.
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?
Proverbs 21:19
He needs to make sure these "Engineers" are properly licensed.
Or else he would have had to write another letter.
When the snow melts in the springtime, the meltwater trickles runs through the grass, soaks through the ground, goes through wetlands, etc... all of which removes contaminants from it. When you dump the snow straight into the harbor, none of that happens - all the pollutants go straight into the ocean.
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.
FEMA has snow melting flame throwers. The problem is that FEMA sent them all to New Orleans to prevent another Katrina-like under-response.
Facts take all of the premium out of arm waving - T. Reynolds
Build a couple giant datacenters like the ones built in North Carolina and Virginia, use the snow to cool them and then sell the computing power for hosting, distributed computing or cloud apps. And hope for a long winter...
How great...you can read reddit.
Because the water that goes into the sewer system does not go straight into the river or the harbor. It first goes to a water treatment facility and then flows into the harbor. http://www.mwra.state.ma.us/03sewer/html/sewditp.htm
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.
Similar to the upcoming US election results
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.
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. Heller and McDonald v. Chicago to explosive technology in what remains of my lifetime.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Snow or Flood.
I have been investigating ways to avoid shoveling, or buy a snow-blower. I have no garage to store it in and my driveway is below grade, so hauling that thing to and from the driveway is at the least inconvenient. And that is without worrying about some drive-by theft if I try leaving it in the driveway over the winter. After looking at the various alternatives, electric cables, hot water from a tank or geo-thermal pumped through plastic pipes, I ran across infra-red heat lamps being used for this. Looks interesting. I have no clue practical this is, or how much it will cost to install yet. But since I need to move and rebuild my driveway anyway, I figure I will ask some contractors for estimates on how much these would add to the cost. Or cost to run for that matter. Here is one link to a somewhat biased source: http://www.infraredheaters.com/snowice.htm#3.0%20%20Overhead
"Federal law prevents the city from dumping snow into the Charles River (too many contaminants), so the city is charged with finding ever more places to pile ever higher mountains of snow."
Yes, you are missing something. It appears they dont want to contaminate the snow with polluted water from the carles river.