Inflatable Snowmen

I recently spoke with a scientist at the Cary Institute who has studied climate change, who shared with me what he sees as a harbinger of warmer winters — inflatable snowmen.

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Will this be the future of winter?  Will it exist only in simulations and symbols? In manufactured snow, in store window displays and inflatable snowmen?  

The Ice Harvest

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On another recent excursion we went to Bantam Lake, where we researched the Berkshire Ice Company.   The company built one of the largest ice plants in New England on the shore of the lake—a structure as big as two football fields, that could hold 75,000 tons of ice.  During the summer, trains full of ice ran daily to New York City.  

A fire destroyed the ice house in 1929, but it took two years for all the ice inside to fully melt.