What is this abominable snowball? It’s a quinzhee, or a snow shelter made by hollowing out piled snow. Yesterday we made an 6′ x 6′ (height/rad.) pile of snow in our back yard, and over the night the snow hardened. This morning we collected sticks and broke them into 14” sections and inserted them randomly all over the quinzhee. Then the fun part, we borrowed a camp shovel from a friend and started hollowing out the quinzhee, careful to stop when we hit the tip of the sticks poking into the pile. Using this approach guaranteed that the wall would be ~14” thick. We made 3 air vents, and a bench the rings the inside. The whole excavation process took about 2 hrs. Viola. We are going to have a quinzhee party to celebrate, so come by some night soon before it melts.
dave love's blog 
Awesome non-igloo! Bet you’re glad the weather is better now:)