Time To Say Goodbye To New England's Biggest Snowman Since Perhaps 2008

The giant snowman in Shirley, 
Massachusetts, lit up at night. 

The forecast in New England calls for warm weather later this weekend and next week, so it might be time to say a fond farewell to Parker the giant snowman. Maybe. 

I say maybe because Parker is so big that it will take a lot of thawing to get rid of him.

He was built in February, towering 20 feet above an adjacent street in Shirley, Massachusetts. Then the big blizzard hit in late February, so Parker grew to 23 feet tall. 

Video of all this is at the bottom of this post. 

No offense to Parker, but he's a fat guy. He's a little wider at the base as he is tall. That's for stability's sake.  Parker's eyes, mouth, arms and buttons down his front also light up at night. 

His hat is a trash can atop a circular four-foot piece of plywood. 

Parker is named after the street in Shirley, Massachusetts where he and his creators live.  Said creator are the Aalerud family, especially Eric Aalerud, who built most of Parker. 

When Parker was a mere 20 feet tall, Eric Aalerud told WHDH 7 News in Boston that the creation of Parker was a lot of work.

"I was very sore.....And I'm an electrician and I flip houses, too, And I will say, I was more sore doing this than anything I've done in the last five, 10 years."

Aalerud used a snowblower, a shovel, wood and a ladder to build Parker, then sprayed water on the giant snowman to freeze everything. 

 Last year, the family built a smaller, but still impressive snowman that stood 15 feet tall. That one lasted until the end of March. 

Parker is now where close to  being the largest snowman in U.S. history. 

That honor goes to a snowwoman named Olympia, who was built in Bethel, Maine during the snowy winter of 2008. She was 122 feet and one inch tall and had a 125-foot diameter at the base, which is still in the Guinness Book of World Records as biggest snowman.  About 13 million pounds of snow created Olympia. 

Her arms consisted of 27-foot tall evergreens. Here "carrot" nose, which was painted by school children is eight foot long. Here eyes were made of giant wreaths. 

Back in Shirley, Massachusetts, Aalerud vows to build an even bigger snowman next winter. And perhaps give the future Parker a wife named Shirley, after the town they're in, of course. They'd better hope next winter is an even snowier one than this one was in Massachusetts.  

Video:

News video about the giant snowman. Eric Aalerud's New England accent helps. Click on this link to view, or if you see the image below, click on that.