Algodoo

A while ago, somewhere, I read that some city either melts their snow or was considering melting their snow and pumping the water down the storm drains. I thought that was crazy because the energy to melt snow is the same amount of energy as it would take to lift the snow 21.2 miles (34.1 km) straight up. So my thought was that the snow could be warmed to the point a little below freezing (maybe by adding some tap water or with a heat pump) and then compressed under great pressure in order to cause it to partially thaw (into slush) and then immediately freeze into a solid when the pressure is removed. If the snow is slush to begin with, then the excess water can be removed by compression, the remaining slush would harden upon removal of pressure. If the ice ball needed to be cooled more for safety sake, then the cooling coils of a heat pump could be used (using the same heat pump that was used to preheat the snow). The manufactured snowball then could be mechanically thrown or maybe shot using compressed air. The flight paths of the ice balls from multiple throwers could be coordinated by a network of computers. Now throwing large ice balls might sound crazy, but its probably no more crazy than putting people on a jet and flying them to different locations around the world. At any rate, the energy to throw the snow should be a fraction of what it takes to melt the snow.