They’re unsightly, filled with garbage and debris, and serve as a daily reminder of just how awful the winter season really was — and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon.
Lingering snow piles from the historic New England snow season continue to plague municipalities in the Greater Boston area, even as temperatures creep toward the 90s and spring makes way for summer.
In Boston, what was once a 75-foot-high snow mound on a parcel of land in the Seaport District, on Tide Street, has been reduced to a three-story pile of dirt and discarded household items that remain encrusted in solid ice.
But even with the beating rays from the sun nothing seems to be powerful enough to zap away winter, once and for all.
“The fact that it’s still there is a science experiment waiting to happen,” said Michael Dennehy, commissioner of the city’s department of public works.
Dennehy said the snow mound, which dates to January, looks more like a landfill, thanks to all of the objects left on the streets and scooped up by plow trucks before being dumped at the site.
Crews have been working for six weeks to clean away the trash as it breaks free from the mound. So far, they have pulled 85 tons of debris from the pile, he said.
"It’s vile,” he said. “We’re finding crazy stuff; bicycles, orange cones that people used as space savers — the funniest thing they found was half of a $5 bill. They’re looking for the other half still.”
The snow has lingered so long that crews even started a pool to estimate when it will finally vanish.

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Dennehy is losing.

“I said by May 30, but that’s this weekend,” he said. “It’s still weeks away from melting.”
Somerville also has remnants of the winter haunting part of the city. Over by Assembly Row, on a state-owned piece of land, two piles of snow still stand, although, they look more like small, ash-covered volcanoes.
“It’s like a wintertime snow pile’s evil twin. It’s dirty, and there’s a reasonable amount of trash there,” said Denise Taylor, spokeswoman for the city.
Somerville had a total of four snow farms during the winter. The remaining two piles at the parkland are still 5 feet tall, and around 125 feet long, Taylor said.
“We’re hoping they will be gone by the end of June,” she said.