It was like a wicked cruel souvenir from what was a wicked brutal winter, a winter that Boston didn’t officially close the books on until this week — when the last of the snow finally melted.
That’s right — the snow lingered until July.
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh commemorated the occasion Wednesday with a barbecue on City Hall Plaza, where he announced the winners of the “Snow Melt Challenge” — the Bostonians who correctly guessed July 14 as “the day we’ve all been waiting for!”
Most of what remained of the record-shattering 110.6 inches of snow Boston got this winter was contained to a once-75-foot-high “snow farm” that lurked ominously over Boston’s booming Seaport district — a formerly hardscrabble part of the waterfront now exploding with high-end development. The pile was so infamous it inspired its own Twitter account.
But the plows that brought the snow there so many months ago brought more than just the white stuff — it was piled so high in the streets that they also scooped up the barrels, bicycles, parking meters and even fire hydrants that were buried below.
The result? Hundreds of tons of garbage encased in ice and snow piled higher than two Green Monsters — Fenway Park’s famously high left field wall — for more than half the year.
Why so long? The trash within the piles actually helped insulate the snow from the sun’s melting rays, according to CNN meteorologist Scot Pilie’.
“Mother Nature also played a major factor in the longevity of the snow mounds,” Pilie’ said. “An unusually cool spring and below-average rainfall in April and May provided for ideal slow-melting conditions.”
Unfortunately, Mother Nature can’t do the same for what still remains of the pile.
“@marty_walsh what are the plans for cleaning up the trash left behind?” tweeted a garbage-weary resident.