How NYC handles snow

It is common knowledge that NYC puts blades on garbage trucks to plow snow:

One thing I didn’t consider is that switching to electric garbage trucks impacted their effectiveness as snow plows.

My friend Trevor, who designs and installs efficient energy systems in buildings in NYC, told me a few other things this weekend about how the city handles snow that I didn’t know.

The Department of Sanitation melts snow using huge snow melting machines because there is nowhere else to put it. Trevor needed a 10ft high pile of snow moved this weekend in order to place a crane over structural supports in the subway system, so the sanitation department brought in loaders, scooped the snow into dump trucks, and hauled it a few blocks away to be melted in giant hot tubs. Here’s an article from the NYPost.

The hot tubs – which can melt roughly 60 to 120 tons of snow per hour – are stationed at sites like Broad and Water streets in lower Manhattan, where football field-sized mountains of snow are dumped into the melting tubs at 38 degrees Fahrenheit.

A video:

Trevor also mentioned that the MTA uses old jet engines mounted to old work cars to blow snow out of yards and to help melt ice on the third rail. Untapped New York has a good article about it:

How NYC Subway, LIRR, and Metro-North Responds to Snowstorms – Untapped New York

Winter Storm Gail is starting today, dumping a foot or more of snowfall. Here’s how the NYC subway, Long Island Railroad and Metro-North prepare for storms.