Remember When the World Record Tallest Snowman Was Won by Maine?

Making a snowman is a winter must, but could you build the world's largest snowman?

If you're as confident as me, you are probably thinking of three or four people who could help you achieve that title. However, you're going to need a LOT more people and help than that.

I'm talking cranes and heavy machinery kind of help...

For the past 15 years, the Guinness World Record for the largest snowman has been held by the state of Maine.

According to a Fox23 article, "Snow woman Olympia was created over the course of a month in February 2008, using a reported 13 million pounds of snow."

She stood at 122 feet and one inch tall (37.21 meters) with a 125-foot diameter at the base, according to Fox.

Her features were adjusted accordingly, requiring:

...a 48-foot-wide fleece hat... 8-foot carrot nose made of chicken wire and cheesecloth...a 130-foot-long scarf, a 6-foot 6-inch snowflake pendant necklace...three 5-foot truck tires as buttons...Her lips were made from car tires, her arms were two 30-foot spruce trees and her eyelashes were eight pairs of skis.

 

I don't think you can comprehend how big that is without seeing the video above.

Now where the heck did the builders get 13 million pounds of snow?

The same way they did when The Bethel Chamber of Commerce built the first largest snowman, Angus, in 1999.

Snowmakers at Sunday River Ski Resort were utilized to make the raw material: snow. According to Fox,

Volunteers then were lifted onto the top of the mound to stomp the snow into a compacted platform, held in place by a metal belt until the structure was firm enough to be removed.

And yes, this "structure" (snow person) was so large, that they used a local engineer, Jim Sysko, to supervise the project.

In 1999, Angus (113 ft), named after Maine’s then-governor (now U.S. Senator) Angus King, was the largest snowman ever created.

In 2008, the same groups, Bethel Chamber of Commerce and Sunday River, smashed that record by making snowwoman Olympia (122 ft), named for the former U.S. senator Olympia Snowe.

The question still remains – who will beat this record? Can a local group or farmer with an excavator make this happen?  Will Sunday River and The Bethel Chamber of Commerce hold this record forever?

Tag your snowman-building team!