Clearing the snow

Here’s a link to story about a snow robot that produces bricks of ice:

The internal compressor addresses a very real problem – what to do with the snow? Instead of acting as a snowblower, which might create more snow clearance problems,

Yuki-taro takes in snow at the front, squeezes it into rectangular bricks, and excretes said bricks out the back. Try teaching your dog to do that!

The robot doesn’t solve the problem of what to do with all the water. That’s detailed here, where geo-thermal heat is used:

In town several additional unique ways of dealing with this snow exist. A concrete-contained stream runs under downtown sidewalks, covered by hinged, lightweight metal grates. People who have access to this “river” can shovel their snow into the running water, sending it floating to the nearby Sea of Japan. Around the nicer homes in town (luckily, including mine) pipes spray a constant stream of hot water onto snow, quickly melting it.

This is where I saw the links, and this where the entertaining comments lie.