Dirty Snow

This mini-glacier is situated on the Stafford Street side of the Webster Square Plaza parking lot.

Isn't it interesting how much dirt ends up on top of the snow piles? It makes them look like piles of dirt instead of piles of snow.

When I was a kid, I once tried digging into one of these leftover piles and found that they're practically solid ice inside. And an old fella told me that, if it never got warm enough and those big piles of snow never melted all the way, then they might end up being like glaciers after a few years and start moving slowly downhill...

Ever since, I've found it interesting to note how late into the Spring season these huge piles of snow last.

Here's a shot from the other end of the mini-glacier...

It seems odd how the first picture of the pile shows so much more dirt on it.

You can imagine that the more dirt there is, and the darker the top of the pile is, the more sunlight and heat it will absorb, and therefore, the faster it will melt.

Over the past half-century, I've noticed that these mini-glaciers have usually disappeared by the beginning of May. Some years it's a little earlier, and some years it's a little later. But when I was a kid, they ended up being covered with a lot more dirt than they are these days. They were, in fact, quite black from all the soot from homes and factories burning coal.