Requiem for a snow bank: The Seaport snow farm is no longer

If you had put money on the possibility of a snow bank lasting until the second week of July, today is the day to cash in.

Fourteen days into July and four months removed from the most brutal winter since the 1800s the Seaport snow farm is no longer.

Piles of rancid garbage and city grime are all that remain of a once mighty snow farm that stood at the Tide Street dumping grounds.

Many said that the amount snowfall accumulated this winter was unthinkable. Managing it effectively, they said, would be improbable. Seeing the piles standing in July would be impossible. But the mighty wrath of last winter defied all logic and measurements.

There were at least eight massive piles of blizzard bounty, many of them around 100 feet high and as wide as every vacant lot that housed them. Most had melted by the time the warm weather came around, but the Seaport pile was one stubborn snowbank and held out longer than anyone imagined.

Yes, my fellow Bostonians, the winter of 2015 is now a memory and the folks who babble endlessly about enduring the Blizzard of ‘78 can shovel their stories of heroism and bravery somewhere else.

We survived the heaviest snowfall on record throughout the course of the shortest month of the year. Consider the prospect of 10 feet of snow falling in 25 days. Something like that might happen in Buffalo, New York, or some other unfortunate location in far away lands like Canada, but not here in Boston.

Images of the snow farms were otherworldly. Large construction vehicles like excavators and dumptrucks looked like children’s toys on the slopes of these impossible man-made mountains. They made chains where snow was carried up the side of the bank to a plateau, where other heavy machinery would then carry it further up in order to make room for more loads.

Mayor Marty Walsh took to Twitter to express his joy over the melting. He had set up a contest to have lunch with the people who guessed the right date of the pile’s demise. Governor Charlie Baker also yweeted out a triumphant declaration: “Our nightmare is officially over!”

Many joked that the piles would linger until next winter, when we could potentially start the horror all over again.

The snow farm held out due to the city grime that coated the top of the pile, absorbing the summer sun and causing the snow to solidify underneath it. Rain was the only weapon that could make a dent in the mass of filth and frozen water.

Rejoice, fellow citizens. Pour out a little bit of a drink to the memory of the mighty Seaport snow farm. May it rest in peace in the water cycle and never darken our doorsteps again.