
Remnant of Boston’s Brutal Winter Threatens to Outlast Summer - aaronbrethorst
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/us/remnant-of-bostons-brutal-winter-threatens-to-outlast-summer.html
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dalke
I learned a new word! "The gelid interior keeps any melting to a trickle."
Gelid means "Very cold; icy or frosty". Google n-grams says it's used with a
frequency about 2-3% that of "frigid."

~~~
boyaka
I had heard this word before [1]. So there were some benefits to spending all
of high school playing Everquest.

[1]
[http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=5461](http://everquest.allakhazam.com/db/spell.html?spell=5461)

~~~
dalke
Like how I leaned "quaff" due to Rogue, or (to a lesser extent) how I learned
to spell "anonymous" due to ftp!

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dsfyu404ed
Trashkrete

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete)

~~~
scrumper
I was thinking the same thing: particulate matter is helping it stay together
longer. Pykrete is hard to melt too.

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snowwrestler
Before powered refrigeration was widely available in the U.S., companies would
cut gigantic blocks of ice out of northern lakes during the winter, and ship
them down south to be stored in warehouses, often covered in wood chips for
insulation. They would last a very long time, even in hot summers.

In nature, I think most people have heard of glaciers, which are accumulations
of ice that last through the summer and into the next winter. (That's the
definition of a glacier, as opposed to a snowfield.) There is type of glacier
called a "rock glacier" that appears on its surface to be a talus field, but
it flows like a glacier. When I reviewed the research in college (a long time
ago, now), no one knew for sure whether rock glaciers were a rock/ice matrix
the whole way through, or whether it was a core of pure ice with a thick layer
of rock/ice matrix near the surface.

Long story short: it takes a lot of energy to melt a significant accumulation
of ice!

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ilamont
There was a five-story pile of snow on the MIT campus after the last storm:

[https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/02/13/residents-
stude...](https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2015/02/13/residents-students-are-
climbing-alps-mit/ETPjPwziCiYbhEgjeR6XRO/story.html#)

At one point people were skiing down it, but I can't find the video.

Another interesting phenomenon was the appearance of specialized equipment for
removing ice and snow from trolley and train tracks. This device is basically
a jet engine (I believe taken from a Korean-war era jet) mounted on a
maintenance car and pointed at the tracks:

[http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011...](http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2011/01/23/mbtas_mattapan_line_relies_on_snowzilla_in_worst_weather/)

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binxbolling
Just to re-iterate something amazing: while this snow farm is the largest and
most famous, there were many others in and around Boston. Until you see one in
person, it's hard to wrap your mind around the size even while you're standing
there in, say, June (for the mound farm nearest me). I don't think this
seaport one will last through the summer, but I can see why some people are
making that bet.

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brlewis
I'm convinced this one won't last through summer. The article shows the pile
12 feet high, and today it's smaller -
[https://twitter.com/brlewis/status/618443607599661056](https://twitter.com/brlewis/status/618443607599661056)

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jameshart
Intriguing phenomenon - anthropogenic glaciation.

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whoisthemachine
Heh - perhaps we have stumbled upon a completely asinine, and thus human way
to reform the glaciers that are melting?

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adestefan
When it snowed heavily in the mid-Atlantic in 2010 we had a couple giant
mounds like that although not that large. Even with the higher spring time
temperatures here they lasted well into June. I wouldn't be surprised if it
did last until next winter.

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localhost3000
I was working at the design center while this was going on. Totally surreal. I
moved out of Boston in May. Lots of people I know have or are planning to
relocate. Quite poetic that the snow has outlasted us... What a wretched,
miserable couple of months. Never again.

~~~
ClassyHacker
That's interesting. I'm not even as north as Boston, about the same latitude
as Philadelphia, and I'm planning to moving south too. I suspect this will be
a sizeable movement.

~~~
mhurron
I moved from Alberta to North Carolina. It gets hot here, really hot. If you
like doing things outside, you might find there are still months where you
really don't want to.

On the other hand, you don't need to scrape heat off your car, or shovel it
off your drive way.

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raverbashing
I don't remember the Canadian mounds of snow taking so much time to melt

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theseatoms
Does anyone know the reason for the difference? Is the Boston snow more
tightly compacted, from plows?

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msandford
If you look at some of the pictures they've got very heavy bulldozers pushing
snow up the hill and excavators moving it around. It would have gotten heavily
compacted as the bulldozer drove across it. It's probably more ice than snow
at this point.

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bryanlarsen
They do that with Canadian snow mounds too. Do they do it as much, though?
Probably not.

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adaml_623
I know it uses far too much energy to melt this snow in the middle of winter
but they really could try to figure out some way to filter the rubbish out
before they pile the snow up. Maybe a snow blower thing and a mesh to catch
the non snow bits.

Plus it's just a bit lazy to just leave the pile there during May/June/July.
Bulldoze it flat and sprinkle charcoal (or something black) on it to absorb
more heat from the sun.

(Disclaimer: I've never lived somewhere with a serious snow problem)

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adestefan
You're not bulldozing a solid chunk of ice that large. You'll destroy the
bulldozer.

~~~
dsfyu404ed
So how does open demo-ing a concrete building work then? Last I heard
reinforced concrete was harder than ice. Not that I want to see public funds
spent on breaking it up, when the sun will do the job for free if we wait, but
this isn't something that construction equipment couldn't handle.

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morsch
Concrete buildings aren't solid concrete. There are still a few WW2 bunkers
around these parts, because it's almost impossible to demolish them, by
design. And even those aren't solid concrete by any stretch.

