Fluffy Snow
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Making snow can make the difference between huge profits and losses in the ski industry. Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton and this is the Weather Notebook. Resorts worldwide invest millions of dollars in snowmaking equipment to ensure more skiable days on the slopes. Jeff Rice tells us how the fluffy stuff is made.

When it snows, nature begins the process tens of thousands of feet up above the earth, and the intricacies of humidity and physics are able to create beautiful latticeworks of light and fluffy snowflakes. No two alike, and a skier's dream..

Manmade Snowmaking systems, on the other hand, blow tiny droplets of water into the freezing air from compressed air guns, creating what are known as "gropples.".

"Like a hail when you hold it in your hand. A gropple is just a round snow particle. It doesn't have any arms or legs".

Peter sterns is the director of snowmaking at Sun Valley resort in Idaho. Sun Valley has one of the largest snowmaking systems in the world. And while Sterns acknowledges it's impossible to truly recreate the real stuff... modern machines are a real advance over the early techniques in the 1950s that used garden hoses and paint spray compressors.

"This is a hydrant, and there's a little microprocessor inside there that the computer talks to via all these little wires that run everywhere. We decide what kind of snow we want here if we're going to put snow out on the ski slope we would decide to make a real nice dry, skiable snow. You do that right at a computer terminal with the click of a mouse".

Computers regulate air to water ratios to create drier mixes, for lighter, less icy snow... All you need are freezing temperatures and a whole lot of water-- It takes about 150,000 gallons of water to cover a single acre with one foot of man-made snow.

Correspondent Jeff Rice reports to us from Boise Idaho. The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. The program is supported in part by the National Science Foundation.