Big snowstorms have been pounding America's East Coast, and as regular readers of this Internet Weblog know, we loooooves us some heavy-duty snow-removal equipment. So it was with much gratitude we received a pointer today from loyal reader Jon Coifman steering us to a Wall Street Journal article about the Vammas, a giant machine now in use at Boston's Logan airport. The WSJ explains:
Manufactured in Finland and used by only a couple of airports in North America, the 68-foot-long machine has a huge blade on the front for plowing, a giant sweeper brush in its midsection and a blower in its tail that spits out air at 451 miles per hour. A staggered line of 10 Vammas machines can clean a runway down to bare pavement in about 10 to 20 minutes, depending on how heavy the snow is.
[...] Each Vammas gets a nickname painted on the side, usually reflecting its assigned driver. Kevin Finn, the lead driver of the Vammas conga line, has named his the "Flying Finn." The Vammas, which Logan started putting in operation in 1998, operate by computer and a joy stick, and the long machine pivots so it can turn in tight radius, much like a hook-and-ladder fire truck.
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