I think it's real. The car top still looks a little moist, so I'm guessing they polished it off before they took the picture. Also note how the lighting and the shadows are exactly how they should be on the car.

It also might be warmer than freezing there, so where the car had been brushed off, the thin layer of remaining snow could have melted. Looks like that good packing snow that you get when its all about to melt, which would explain how they managed to cut such nice walls.

Seems like it could be real. Probably there was some kind of snowslide into a parking lot. You'll notice that the door of another parked car can be seen to the left of the uncovered one.

Why would they dig a square around the car? Don't they need to get it out, or are they just showing it off to passing aircraft (maybe UFOs)?

Anyone who has ever dug a car out of snow knows that you can never get all of the snow out. Zoom in on the car. It appears as if the front end of the hood is buried, but there is not even any snow stuck in the cracks around the hood.

If you load the picture with photoshop and zoom in on the edge of the foreground snowbank, and then change to a negative image, the editing along the edge becomes apparent.

It looks as though someone dug a path out, parked there car there, posed for the photo, and then someone edited the front snowbank in.

As for the idea that it was warm out; if that was the case then the windows on the car which is still buried would also be clear.

look! the snow didn't even damage the arial!

I've never seen snow before so I have no comment.
:down:

The more I look at it, the more I think this is a clever fake. I highly doubt that two guys were capable of digging a square hole like that. If anything the hole was dug by an earthmover (look at the huge snow chunks piled behind the hole, too big for a wooden handled shovel!) then the car was placed inside. I agree the front snowbank does look a bit fishy as well.

I think some of you guys have never lived anywhere that experiences heavy snowfalls. I don't see anything fishy about this picture at all. Sometimes it isn't just mother nature that buries your car in a snow drift, sometimes the snow plow ("look, Daddy, another bastard") buries your car or your driveway for you. Also a dark coloured car in the sun can quite easily melt the bit of snow that's left after brushing it off even if the temperature is still below 0C.

I managed an account in New York here a couple of years back. They were having a really bad winter, and the guy I allways spoke to told me that he would be gone a couple of days because he couldn't find his car, said it was buried somewhere in the snow in a parking lot.

When I looked in photo edit software I couldn't get the effect Rod saw, but then again I'm not using photoshop.

The edges of the snow where it is so square looks fishy, but on the other hand I have seen snowdrifts this high. (I'm from Canada remember, and my Mum lives waaaaaaaaaay up north.)

To my eyes the picture doesn't look obviously Photoshopped - note the second car embedded in the wall to the people's left, which looks real enough. Nonetheless it does seem mighty odd that they would dig an impressively square hole around the car, rather than simply digging a path for it to drive out. It looks for all the world as if someone has used a big digger to chomp out a hole, and then the car was craned in; or that it's a toy car, and the people have been pasted over the image. The bigger question is, why are they bothering? They're not going anywhere in that weather, not in that kind of car.

The reason why the area around the care is square is because they propped up boards around the car to prevent the snow from caving in on them and the car. Simple explanation.

D'oh! That makes sense. if the photo is real, I'd do the same thing.

I love how their hands reflect off the roof of the car even though the sky is overcast and there would therefore be no reflection.

Actually even in the darkness of my room right now I can still see somewhat of a reflection when I hold my hand over the glass top of my desk. Now combine that with the glossy finish of a car and mild lighting and that explains it right there.

it might be my bad eyesight, but if im right i love the touch of the blue shirt hanging in the back of the car!
if this is real however (i dont think it is) they musnt like their neighbour that much - all that effort they could have dug a bit further! Also - why isn't the owner of the other car digging his/her car out? they must be nearby, I don't think they'll be going to far in that snow?!?

Because both cars are in the same driveway? They're probably both focusing on one car at a time (and I'm assuming they went with the most expensive car first), instead of working on both cars at once. That's alot of shoveling they had to do, remember.

While I have seen cars and other things buried under heaps of snow similar to this...I think this picture is just a fake. I've done a lot of digging in the snow and the pattern matches in no way. Has to be larger machine of some sort.

Then that has to be one of the best Photoshopping jobs ever since that's a real situation people deal with and the picture isn't far-fetched. The lighting is accurate, the shadows are accurate, the car is obviously still wet, and the digging pattern in the square shape is standard. The snow walls are flatted, because they probably used boards to keep the snow out while they were digging. There's nothing about this picture that strikes me as fake, but I can understand it's a little hard to believe for people who've never experienced massive snow fall before.

Like "Blondin" above said, it seems plausible to me. Most likely, this is drifted snow rather than plowed snow. Plowed snow would be very dense and compact, while drifted snow would be a lot easier to heave about.

If you're going to dig out a car and get a picture of it, you may as well make the corners neat and tidy. While you're doing that, the black car will warm up in the sun and melt the sun.

The first car to be dug out will be the hardest (i.e.: the most work.) Any subsequent nearby cars to be moved will have a nice big gap to dump snow into, or manuever the car through. The first car to be dug out might be owned by the guy to needs to get to work (or the store or take care of the family) the most, rather than the most expensive.

A snow drift isn't going to hurt a car. (But an 11 year old bounding through the snow might...)

It is oviously a staged picture. The snowbank and cut-out look exaclty like those made by those big snow-blower trucks they use to clear highways and ski area parking lots with.

The folks in the truck were probably clearing a parking lot. They cut a hole in the bank, parked a car in there, plowed some snow in front, and took a picture of themselves.

The car in the bank on the left is probably real, and is what they were trying to get out.

Used boards to keep the sides up? Really? It is obvious you really know nothing about snow.

If you need to prop the sides up, when you remove the boards the snow will simply collapse. Unless the weather hits 40 below for a few days, the snow will not solidify enough to remove the boards.

Again, if the snow melted off of the car that is dug out, it would have melted from the window of the buried car.

As for the machinery to dig the hole, there is a chance, but if they did, then they marked up the sides with shovels when they were done to make it look better. The sides simply do not have the toolmarks to show anywhere that anything other than a shovel has been used.

Now take a look at the size of the hole. How much snow was removed from it? Lots. Where did it go? There is very little piled around the top. Nobody gets out of a hole to carry the dirt (or snow) twenty feet away while they're digging a hole straight down now, do they?

And my main point, WHY? Why dig a square hole around a car? Where are you going to move the car to?

Maybe they just dug it out to get at their bong.

Okay wanna see something neat?

This is Rod admitting he was wrong.

:red:

I took another look at the picture, and I seem to have mistaken the pixellation effects of the camera that was used as photoshopping.

Sorry.

Also, when I was looking at the pic again, I thought of an optical illusion. I think what I came up with is probably what happened. And this would explain why they dug the hole.

http://www.villagephotos.com/image.asp?id_=12100030

But all of the stuff I said about cars and snow still applies.

Therefore, as Mayor Diamond Joe Quimby would say, "I am flip-flopping." I think it is a real photo with an optical illusion built in.

Not a fake. YOU get snowed in for more than a couple of days and see what happens. You'll do anything for entertainment. Also, a nice, fluffy, light snow is easy to move with a shovel, and a snow shovel makes a wide, flat cut. Just like the cuts you see on the side of the snow in the pic.

I think it was a couple guys sitting around having a beer after being stuck inside for a week. They wanted to show the world just how miserable it was so they grabbed their shovels and started digging.

No Peter, I think you're the one whose mistaken. You've obviously never experienced their situation before judging from your post.

Why bother? Where the heck are they going? I agree, why would they did straight down and not some kind of path? It looks believable enough, but my question is why would anyone expend all of that time and energy when you clearly can't drive the car anywhere? Did they do it just for the cool picture? I've dug my car out of snow before, (not that much, but still) and believe me, if it's for the purpose of using the car, you really only dig out as much as you have to in order to get the car out. It seems to me that they really went overboard with the digging for some other purpose, don't you think? Either they were really bored or thought it would be cool to achieve some kind of internet fame. In any case, that's an aweful lot of work!
I live in the south now and I don't miss the snow!
Cool picture though.

It could be out of sheer boredom or something like "Oh man this would be a funny picture", or they could be doing it because they don't want to damage the car, since it's being submerged in snow for what looks like an extended amount of time.

Well, I dont think they actually went overboard digging; after all they had to drive the car in there, and also have room to open the doors, and get at the trunk and stuff. And the bong.

They probably just guessed at what size to dig the parking spot.

I think Peter's explanation is the best one. Snow plows dug the hole and they pulled the car in there and made it look like they had dug all that.

I think it's real.

Why dig a square? I think they have started digging from the rear of the car and are working towards the front. They are taking a break (not done yet) and posing for a photo.

Why isn't the snow melted off the car to the left?
1. That area may be in shadow (it doesn't look very sunny out anyways- the background looks pretty misty).
2. They may have just dug out that area (more recantly than uncovering the top and windows of the car on the right) and the snow has not had a chance to melt off.

If the care was driven into an opening made by a large snow removal machine (this snow is way too deep for the average pick-up truck plow), and then plowed in, the guys would have to neaten it up anyways, because the plowed in snow would tumble over the front of the car.

When the weather is like that, how easy is it to get in cahoots with a plow operator for a funny photo? Aren't they busy doing their jobs?

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