Snow Piles from Record-Breaking Buffalo Storm Still Melting

The Associated Press
Published: July 29,2015
It's the dead of summer, but you wouldn't necessarily know that in a part of Buffalo, where snow piles still remain.
Two piles remain in an abandoned lot where trucks dumped it after a freak November storm buried neighborhoods in so much snow – 7 feet fell in spots – that crews had nowhere else to put it.
At its height, the snow mounds towered over the light poles, said Eugene Kiszelewski, who owns the G&T Inn across the street

The Buffalo snow piles in November, above, and then today. (AP Photos)

Up to 11,000 truckloads were taken there, Streets Commissioner Steven Stepniak said, creating a mountain five stories high.
One of the leftover piles is about the size of two school buses end to end, the other a bit smaller. Grayish white ice peeks through, but both resemble earthen berms, because the snow is covered with a thick layer of dirt and even grass.
The swampy surrounding land, though, offers proof it is slowly melting, even in Buffalo.
(MORE: Buffalo's Lake-Effect Snow Blitz)
New York state climatologist Mark Wysocki said the dirt cover is insulating the compacted snow, drawing out the time it is taking for the warmth of the sun to reach it. The ground, meanwhile, is heating from below.
"It's sort of like an Oreo cookie right now," Wysocki said, "where you've got snow in the middle and heat from above and heat from below and it's slowly eating away at the snow."
Just how long it will stick around, Wysocki said, depends on how thick the covering layer is.
Boston just saw the last remnants of its ruthless winter melt away earlier this month.
"It could," Wysocki said, "be there when the next snow falls."
MORE: 2014's Lake-Effect Snows