Snow all Night, Energize all day

Minnesota, such an amazing state! Our beautiful state is known for many things, some of those things are; blood thirsty mosquitoes, a ton of lakes, amazing woodlands, the Twin Cities i.e Minneapolis and Saint Paul, and of course Prince. These listed things are a pretty good example of what most people think of, when thinking about Minnesota, but there is one thing I haven’t mentioned that Minnesota is quite known for....our wonderful weather. To be specific, the crazy snow storms that we get here, theres a reason our state is nicknamed MinneSNOWta. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could put all of that snow to use? Instead of it just sitting around all winter and eventually turning yucky in the spring, could it be possible to use it in a productive way.

Think about a structure that looks somewhat like a lamppost with a bowl on top. This structure could be used to collect snow, in the bowl-like container, and once the sun came out again it would melt the snow. The melted snow would then go down a pipe which is inside the post of the structure, the melted snow would first go through a filter to rid it of any solid materials. It would then continue down the pipe to a spiral shaped device that resembles a water wheel, as the melted snow turns the wheel it would generate energy that would be transferred to a nearby collector by way of underground wires. Once the melted snow passes over the wheel, it would go into and underground water storage tank that could be used for a variety of things.

These snow collectors could be both useful and decorative, they would be most useful in the cities where snow has to be plowed on a regular basis and is the most likely to turn that nasty gray color. It would have to be monitored though how many of these snow collectors were put up, because if there wasn’t any snow on the ground the seasonal balance would be thrown off. The snow collectors could even be built out of nature friendly materials, that would only be able to exist in cold weather and would decompose once it hit a certain temperature for at least two weeks. So what do you think, want to help me build a snow collector?