The Makeshift Melter at M&T

MSA staffers are known for their resourcefulness.  Like Seabees, their "can do" approach to challenges just won't quit.

After enduring the third (or was it fourth?) major snowstorm of the season, Jeff Provenzano (Director of Football Operations) had enough.  As the dump trucks and front end loaders continued to deposit their drifts, Jeff cooked up (literally) a plan to assist the rising temperatures in making them disappear.

Using an old dumpster and some steamfitting talent from nearby Trigen, Jeff designed his own snow melter on the south side of the stadium.

It isn't as fancy or as mobile as the hired gun the City brought in from Canada, but it doesn't cost the same hourly rate ($300) as a good divorce lawyer, either.  It was patched together with materials at hand.

I dropped in last week for the test run.  The device was still getting welded together.  While the first trials indicated the pipes needed to be extended further inside, the technology was very promising.

Jeff plans to hang on to his melter until the end of snow season.  While forecasts have been scaled back considerably, Jeff isn't taking any chances.  Any new snow is going to get cooked onsight rather than packed into a mountain range.

Modest souls that we are, we didn't publicize our MacGuyverized melter.  The Canadian snow dragon got all the plaudits. 

Reminds me of another steam tycoon forgotten by history.  Do you know who invented the first steamboat?  You probably think it's Robert Fulton but in fact it is James Rumsey, a blacksmith who developed the technology and demonstrated it on the Potomac in 1787 -- twenty years before Fulton launched the Clermont in New York.  Fulton's successful commercial enterprise on the Hudson gives him the credit for being the father of the steamboat industry, whereas Rumsey had to settle for a neat oblisk monument in Shepherdstown.

So even if Jeff isn't remembered for introducing steam powered snow melting technology to Baltimore, maybe we can commemorate his invention in a marble monument of some sort at M&T.