Let It Snow

It’s always been necessary, if never easy, to make snow for skiing in New Jersey, where winters are famously fickle.

In the late 1960’s, to provide the compressed air needed for snow making, the owners of the New Vernon resort then known as Great Gorge (now Mountain Creek) installed a modified jet aircraft engine in the parking lot at the base of the mountain.

You could hear it whir all over the area. Using a jet engine made sense, since the first snow making machines, built in the 1930s, were used to test airplanes in wintry conditions. Snow making has become far more sophisticated since then, which is good, because the local weather hasn’t gotten any more favorable for winter sports. Mountain Creek’s snowmaking is state-of-the-art. (Photos by Colin Archer/Agency New Jersey.)


Photo courtesy of Mountain Creek.

1. DRY THIS

To make snow, the air must be below 32º F and dry, because converting sprayed water droplets to snow depends on the droplets evaporating, and damp air hinders evaporation. Snowmakers rely on wet bulb (WB) readings, which measure both air temperature and relative humidity.


2. PUMP IT UP

At Mountain Creek, water is pumped up the mountain from one of three man-made lakes to a compression house at the summit. There the water is cooled, then pulled by gravity through 16-inch pipes to snow guns all around the mountain. The type of gun depends on altitude and wind.

3. ATOMIZER

At the compression house, air is sucked in through three huge vents, compressed, then sent to the guns through pipes that run alongside the water pipes. In the gun, high pressure air atomizes the spewing water into droplets, which become snow about five feet from the nozzle.

4. CLING ON

In damp weather, Snowmax (which contains the same naturally occurring bacteria, pseudomonas Syringae, used to insulate fruit trees from frost) is added to the water. Snowmax aids crystallization by giving the droplets something to cling to. It also promotes bigger, drier flakes.


5. AIR AID

Snowmakers want what football punters want: hang time. Droplets are more likely to freeze the longer they’re in the air. Wind can help or hurt, depending on its force and direction. That’s why nozzles are closer to the ground on steep slopes, where wind fiercely swirls.

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