In the south -east, the ski season is starting later and natural snow is getting difficult. But ski resorts are using advanced snowcaging techniques to keep mountains white and skier on slopes.
Jess Dobson traveled from Rale in West Virginia to Snogo Resort, when a storm dumped fresh powder ahead of the busy President’s Day weekend.
“I think the weather starts after a while every year and it is too much artificial ice,” Dobson said.
According to data analyzed by Climate Central, snowfall declined in most parts of America between 1970–2019. Winter is the fastest warming season for most of the country and the number of days continues to fall with temperatures below 32 ° F in the coming decades.
Data analyzed by climate central
Snosh’s marketing director Sean Casel said, “Natural snow is just icing on cakes for us, so we see it as if we are not going to do all this.” “We got to make ice.”
Snogow has invested over $ 5 million in recent years to upgrade the snowcuting technology into the resort to more efficient, high-trunk cannons.
“We used to get about six or seven days in a row of enough weather to make ice, now it seems that it is just two or three until you get a warm up,” Cassel said. “So we will really have to monitor ourselves for those upsing and now we are making more ice in those hard windows as much as we had before.”
Snosho operators determined the resort’s snowcuting capabilities: if each gun was indicated in the football field, they would be able to make 27 feet ice in 12 hours.
“They call it fake ice, but it is still real ice,” said Talia Freeman, a marketing director in the beach mountain in Northern Carolina. “It is made with a machine and humans instead of just mother nature.”
Beach has also installed new snow blowers in recent years to compensate for the new winter season, including an all-visitor system on its tubing run.
“It has an attached place that can produce ice inside [of the machine] And it is capable of creating ice above 60 degrees, so it is a real game changer for us, ”said the Freeman.
Earlier resorts are also promoting off-season activities, such as mountain biking, to attract tourists throughout the year.
“Mountain biking has become for summer what skiing for winter is for us,” Cassel said. “We are trying to be less dependent on winter as a business.”