microclimates and snow?

the internet says it is seventeen degrees ( fahrenheit ) here...my thermometer disagrees and has an ambient air temperature that is seven degrees warmer...microclimate? either way it is well below freezing and the snow cover has stabilized with an icy crust after two days of above or near freezing temperatures and rain...

there is considerably more green showing in the rye bed...

the green is showing because the rains of the past two days have pockmarked the surface and erased 1.9375 inches of snow from the bed's surface...

there has always been green showing in the wheat bed...

the surface of the wheat bed is also pockmarked but not nearly as deeply as the rye bed and it has only lost 1 inch of snow cover...i am assuming the ambient air temperature was nearly the same for both since they abut one another, so how to account for the difference...

i am uncertain...the beds are set back in the yard by a pair of locust trees and the one by the wheat bed is a few feet closet than the one that is near the rye bed...so its branches overhang the wheat bed more fully than the one by the rye ( and shade the bed more after they leaf...fortunately later in spring ) and so may have deflected more of the rain from the wheat bed than the rye...grasping at straws? probably...still there was an uneven amount of snow loss over the surface of two beds located next to one another and i am human so i need an explanation.