Watching Snow Melt

I know, it sounds deadly dull. May as well watch grass grow. Ahh, if only there were grass to watch right now. Sighhhhh....

But there is plenty of snow still, and I was parked yesterday with a big bank of it a few inches in front of my car. It was only mid morning, but still warm enough for melting. I dragged out my Kindle and started trying to read. Something out of the corner of my eye kept distracting me. Finally I put it down to see what it was.

Little bits of the bank kept dropping, just enough for a now-it's-here-now-it's-not flash of motion. I wasn't actually watching the snow melt. From the side the dripping was hidden inside the snow bank. But bits kept getting undercut as their support melted, and they dropped.

Never having actually thought about it before, I simply assumed an even melt and a smooth top surface. But that's not how it happened. Fantastic shapes were being left behind, resembling those tiny sea horses which look like a twig full of leaves. If they stuck up above the bank enough, drips were visible from their low points. While I kept waiting for those to fail and fall, others bits were dropping away quite regularly, at a frequency of about 1-2 per second over the area directly in front of my car. I never managed to be looking right at one as it fell, just caught the motion while I looked somewhere else. I found myself wishing someone, somewhere (well, right here, actually)  had a video camera capable of shooting a frame every few seconds and putting it together in a movie to accent the drama.

But since I neither have one of those nor know someone who does, I'll just settle for it melting away. Soon, please.