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Hot Snow
Wed Feb 05, 2003
Listen in RealAudio 
Hi, I'm Bryan Yeaton for The Weather Notebook. For our last Brainstorm we asked why, at ski
areas, they shoot the snow so high into the air. Most of the replies had at least a part of
the answer. From Omaha, Nebraska, Patrick Prince postulated that the water droplets needed
time to turn into ice crystals. Jim Joseph from Buffalo agreed.
JJ: Well Bryan, they need to get it as high as they can so that it has time to crystalize and
turn into snow before it hits the ground. The last thing you want is for it to hit the
ground, turn back into water, turn back into ice and have your skiers sliding across a sheet
of glass.
But there's a bit more to the solution. As Aaron Kravitsky of Grand Rapids, Michigan, pointed
out in an e-mail, when water changes phase from liquid to solid it gives off heat. Actually,
quite a bit. It's called latent heat and if the snowguns were aimed closer to the ground it
could melt all that expensive, manufactured powder. In all this science we may forget the
real reason all these ski areas worry about this stuff. Pat McDonald, a former Air Force
weather forecaster, cuts to the chase, as it were.
PMcD: In a nutshell, I think that shooting the snowguns way up in the air makes for bigger,
fatter, and drier snowflakes. Even though I'm not a skier I would expect that would make for
better control.
Not the way I ski. Special funding for The Weather Notebook comes from Davis Instruments,
makers of the Vantage Pro Wireless Weather Station, who along with Subaru is sponsoring The
Weather Notebook's cross-country tour 2003. You'll find out all about it at
weathernotebook.org. For more on the interesting properties of freezing water, check out our
Weather Notebook archives from May 16, 2002.
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