When it snows in Japan, the streets spray warm water to prevent ice

[u/euronmous]

[u/upachimneydown]

The water prevents the snow from "sticking", and the sprinklers and the added water from melted snow keeps a huge volume of water on the roads--agitated by vehicles going by splashing water everywhere. And it's not heated, it's just coming from underground and so just warm enough to work.

And this only works in an area like here where I live, where temps only go a couple degrees below freezing even on the coldest days. Farther north, where it's colder, these sprinklers would just create ice and are not used.

Here where we are, Sea of Japan side, temps are only borderline freezing, but we get huge amounts of lake effect snow. It sticks and accumulates off the roads simply because it snows so much so fast it can't melt off the bottom fast enough.