Making Snow

Why is it that you never see Crystal making snow??? Is there a limit to how much water they can use? Just wondering.

Unless the temperatures are very cold (such as what you would find in New England at this time of year) most snow making is made at night. Temperatures here are relatively mild so I offer this as a possibility. In any case even though snow can be made right up to the freezing point on the modern gear, my guess is that would be left for nightime snowmaking. I would guess that bright sunlight could result in enough energy absorbed to cause poor yield.<br><br>From what I have seen of snow making operations, the snow made at lower temperatures is better, tends to have less refreezing into a big hard lump under the jets. Even so the groomers just break up the chunks.<br><br>There may also be a financial reason as well. Crystal may do snowmaking primarily to boost the start/quality of skiing at the beginning of a year (especially in the hard used areas near the bottom of the runs). My guess is that their snowmaking resources are not designed to create skiing conditions in the absence of natural snow. (In New England and the Mid Atlantic areas, most of the operations have systems that can yield a full season of skiing, without a drop of natural snow.) At some point it may be diminishing returns to spend the money and resources on a season that may already be written off as a financial loss.<br><br>Alan

Crystal uses some snowmaking.... <br><br> <br>

My guess is that their snowmaking resources are not designed to create skiing conditions in the absence of natural snow.

<br><br>That's right, and it's not easy to solve by getting more water or more money. The supplemental snowmaking systems at places like Crystal can at most improve the marginal conditions near the base, not cover entire slopes of nearly bare ground with a skiable base. Why? Because the real problem for resorts here trying to make snow is that the Pacific NW maritime climate is just very ill-suited for snowmaking. The reason is humidity, which is the archenemy of snowmaking processes both man-made and natural. The temperature limit on snow formation is set not by the actual air temperature, but by the "wet-bulb temperature", which is the lowest temperature that can be reached by evaporation (evaporative cooling is really what makes water vapor freeze into snow crystals). Cold and dry conditions with low relative humidity are ideal for snowmaking, which we rarely have west of the Cascade Crest. Sunlight actually has minimal effect on snowmaking processes, the feeble energy from the winter sun is far smaller than the huge latent heat energy involved in snow formation.<br><br>On the East Coast, the weather alternates between wetter/warmer and colder/drier periods, so there are typically very good conditions for snowmaking between almost every winter storm system (which bring more rain than snow over there). The Rockies have an even more ideal climate for snowmaking, since it is almost always cold and dry during the winter. Snowmaking can occur well above freezing (up to 40 F) in ideal conditions, and natural snow often falls at 40+ F air temperatures at the beginning of storm systems in those areas. Not so in the Pacific NW, where cold and dry conditions are uncommon, especially this winter for the past month (except today). Even today, it's not very dry here compared to the East Coast under a northwesterly flow or any typical winter day in the Rockies. Whistler is one of the few NW resorts with frequent good snowmaking conditions, since it is located in a pass through the Coast Mountains which channels northeasterly Arctic outflow between storm systems, much more so than the WA passes.<br><br>The following chart is from the Backyard Blizzard Home Snowmaker website. Use the RH% column in the NWAC telemetry to see when snowmaking is possible at your favorite ski area.  The weather conditions at NW areas are very rarely within the optimal green region, even our best cold and dry days (like today) are marginal for snowmaking. Overnight into Feb 8, Crystal cooled to 19 F with over 95% humidity (the green region), but during the day it's up over 30 F with humidity still over 80% (solidly in the red region).  So no snowmaking during the day today, but their webcam right now shows new man-made snow overnight with lots of groomer tracks on it.<br><br><br> <br>

Amar,<br>Is there anything snow related that you don't know????<br>Thanks for the great info.

Thanks for the compliment, but there's certainly much more that I don't know about snow than I do know. I'm very fortunate right now to be learning new things about snow and weather and so many other interesting subjects every single day.

Great Info Amar! <br>I agree that there is much more to learn about snow than what we do know! I appreciate the insight that you bring to this site and thread.<br>Thanks, Joe

Amar,<br><br>One of the issues with snowmaking is getting the water droplets to freeze. Supercooled droplets can occur at quire low temperatures and is no doubt and issue in snowmaking. I had heard and seen that some years ago, snowmakers were using additives (one creative one was a bacterium that had ice nucleating properties) to promote freezing even at temps just at or below freezing. I can imagine that the heat of crystalization can have an effect at the warmer temps, but considering the high volume of air used in relation to the relatively small amount of water in the airflow that evaporative cooling wouldn't be such a big factor at the low temps shown on your table. Do you know if these nucleating additives are currently being used?<br><br>Alan