Snow melts in shape of whale in Long Island town

THE Eastern Seaboard of America has been battered by snow in recent weeks, with the likes of New York and Boston experiencing several feet of the white stuff in some areas.

The whale-shaped snow on the Sag Harbor roof. Picture: Joe Markowski

This photo was taken in the Long Island town of Sag Harbor - appropriately a former whaling port - earlier this week.

Taken by local resident Joe Markowski Sr., the picture was posted on the Facebook page of the Sag Harbor Express newspaper.

Sag Harbor took hold of the whaling industry in the mid 1700s, taking over from the nearby harbor town of Northwest, which didn’t have a deep enough port for international ships.

The town even featured in Herman Melville’s book Moby Dick, but the whaling industry ultimately collapsed after 1847, primarily due to the discovery of other methods to make kerosene. The last whaling ship to sail from Sag Harbor was the Myra in 1871.

However, a number of the town’s houses still have ‘Widow’s Peak’ features today - balconies allowing wives of whaling captains to see the ocean and watch for their loved ones returning home.

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