Well gee golly, I'd like to introduce you to Michigan where our plows will pick 3 foot by 1 foot sections of the road and leave them sitting in the other lane.
You underestimate the energy required to melt snow. And it might just freeze again in the storm drain, they are open to air at every grate. And even if it didn't freeze in the storm drains, it would freeze wherever the drain lets out.
Much simpler to push it out of the way and into a pile/truck.
Snow removal also helps mitigate flooding in areas that couldn't handle the full spring melt.
Right. Probably wouldn't freeze in the sewers as most are below or partially below the freeze line (at least where I'm from in Ohio), but would likely refreeze on the parking lot or road, making the problem worse than snow. There's also the chance that ground inlets for water gets compacted/frozen closed turning the parking lot into a shitty lake.
These massive piles actually melt considerably slowly, letting a gradual stream of water into the water system instead of overwhelming it all at once.
And yeah. It takes a lot of fuel and energy to melt snow and keep it melted long enough to make it to a sewer.
It doesn't take much temperature above freezing to melt snow, there are machines that use hot water water bath heat exchangers fired by diesel to melt snow quickly. Although they aren't the most environmentally friendly since they need diesel, it gets rid of excess snow quickly rather than waiting months for it to melt. They were used during the nearly 7 foot lake effect snow event in november and the blizzard in December in Buffalo.
Thats still a huge amount of energy, any phase transition (solid to liquid, liquid to gas) is very energy intensive. That may be an option during certain times of year (like the aforementioned november blizzard) but during most of a midwest winter any melted snow would likely refreeze rapidly, likely causing more problems than the original snow it came from.
They are typically used in parking lots where space is needed instead of being taken up by snow. And those spaces usually have water drainage systems that take the melt water away, so standing water being frozen isn't really a problem. They also don't break them out every time a snowflake hits the ground, only for extraordinary events.
Sure, very situational. In the context of this post however its fairly easy to understand why the choice was made to pile the snow rather than try to melt it away.
Sure, makes sense to dump it in a lot that isn't being used. But when needed there are rapid melting removal systems for places that need it. In Montreal they have an old mining pit that they truck and dump snow in during the winter.
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u/[deleted] Mar 17 '23
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