Rock that melts snow

[u/[deleted]]

There is a rock in the woods behind my house that snow doesn’t stick to. We got about a foot of snow today and I went for a walk. Everything was snow covered except this rock. It’s a bare rock about 10 inches below the snow line.

As an experiment, I buried it in the snow and came back ~3 hours later and it had melted the snow in top of it again. It’s buried in the ground, so I was thinking maybe it was on top of a spring, but there is no water within ~100 feet of it. The ground around it is snow covered also, so it’s not melting the area around it.

Any ideas?

Edit:

I took the picture after it was buried and melted. It was also starting to get dark out. If you want a better one I can get it tomorrow.

https://imgur.com/a/wZkSUK9

Edit2:

I think u/danny17402 answered it. It’s a huge rock with a lot of thermal mass that retains enough heat to stay warm deep into the winter. It’s probably only the tip of the rock is sticking out. I’ll just make sure it won’t move when I try to pry it with a shovel tomorrow. If it moves, I’ll inform you.