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Boston's Disgusting Urban Snow Farms Have Finally Melted

Flakes take forever to accomplish things

By Rain Noe - July 15, 2015

in Urbanism

New York City's horrifically humid summer is here, making me miss writing prior posts about snow. In February we looked at implements to get snow off of roofs and a better design for a snow-clearing vehicle. And as the shirt starts sticking to my back this morning, the snow-buried Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route looks pretty inviting.

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Boston got what seemed like that much snow this past winter, and they faced the real problem of where to put it all. So much of it piled up that they set aside "snow farms" where they could dump the stuff to die.

But the stuff didn't die easy. Incredibly, it took until yesterday—yes, July 14th—for the last pile to melt, according to a Tweet from Boston Mayor Marty Walsh.

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Here's a time lapse of the pile melting, and it's fairly gross; they started shooting it in late March, when the white pile had already slightly melted and turned brown, going from debris-impregnated snow to snow-impregnated debris.

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For perspective on what it used to look like, here's the pile when it was still white in February:

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A similar pile at MIT was so clean-looking that students climbed it like a mountain:

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MAN that looks pretty good right about now.

o

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Alex Botkin

9 years ago

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The snow was no more clean when it was white than it was dirty when melted. What you are observing is the concentration of airborne particulate for the most part (stuff Bostonians breathe regularly )and crap that Bostonians threw on their streets before the snow for the rest. The water from the melting snow mixed with the similarly polluted waters of the harbor.

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Juan Cano

9 years ago

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Mostly, I wonder where all the dirty snowmelt went to. In Boston, it looks like it just drained right into the harbor or the Charles River, full of contaminants. I'll have to look it up.

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