In Jackson, Wyoming the Public Works Department uses a large parking lot in town to store snow removed from streets and parking lots throughout the winter months. According to The Mountain Town News, as of March 19, the amount of snow in Jackson tied with 1952 as the deepest
snowpack ever
for that date. This means that the snow storage pile at the fairgrounds parking lot this season is big, really big.
Sam Jewison, Jackson’s Streets Manager, estimates that roughly 10,000
truck-loads of snow from town
has been hauled to the lot. “At roughly 65-70 seconds per truck loading time,” said Jewison, “that’s nearly 4.5 weeks of continuous loading.” Town Manager Larry Pardee estimated that the size of the snow pile’s foot print was approximately 2.75 acres at the base.
On March 20, Matt Gotham and Reed Armijo from Jorgensen Engineering were able fly a drone over the parking lot to calculate the height and volume of the pile. Gotham and Armijo calculated the snow mound had a maximum height of 50.5 feet and a volume of 119,400 cubic feet.
So the question on everyone’s mind is “How many snowmen could this make?”
According to Roy Pruett, a Professor of Electrical Engineering Technology at Bluefield State College, it takes almost 19 cubic feet of snow to build the engineer’s ‘ideal snowman’. Professor Pruett published an article entitled “Cool Man” where he calculated the design of a perfect snowman (Industrial Engineer: IE; Dec2003, Vol. 35 Issue 12, p66).
With this calculation in mind, the amount of snow contained in Jackson’s snow storage pile could, in theory, be used to make approximately 169,673 snowmen. Jackson, Wyoming’s population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, is 10,532. This would equate to about 16 snowmen for each individual in Jackson.
That’s a lot of snowmen. Some might even say it has been the winter of the
snowmanapocalyse.
Below is a 3D heat map of the snow storage pile and a brief video of the snow pile can be viewed by CLICKING HERE .
