Countdown to snowmaking has ... stopped!
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- Created on Tuesday, 21 September 2010 23:39
- Written by Dena Rosenberry
BY DAVE PHILIPPS
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Loveland Ski Area this summer started a countdown on its website to the second on Sept. 21 when snow making would start.
When the clock hit zero Tuesday temperatures on the Front Range hovered around 90 degrees. Even up on the Continental Divide, the thermometer hit 64.
“There is no way we could make snow, so we stopped the countdown,” Loveland spokesman John Sellers said.
Snowmaking season in Colorado often comes shockingly early, when most people are not ready to think of winter. But this year a sweltering September has broken heat records, turning resorts’ arsenals of snow guns into little more than over-powered sprinklers.
“We usually start making snow in the third week of September,” said Leigh Hierholzer, marketing director for Arapahoe Basin, which vies with neighboring Loveland each year to be the first ski slope in North America to open.
When conditions cooperate, it takes both mountains about two weeks, using powerful water cannons that shoot a fine mist into the air, to cover the slopes in a sturdy coating of man-made snow.
But snow-making crews need freezing temperatures to form ice, and the mountains have yet to see a hard freeze. Tuesday live webcams at both resorts showed tawny slopes that still held a bit of green grass.
“All our equipment is in place,” said Hierholzer, “You can see the guns on the webcam. We just need the weather to cooperate.”
The forecast is not promising. The National Weather Service is calling this week for ski country highs in the 60s and lows in the mid-30s.
“But that can change very quickly,” said Sellers. “And our crew is ready to go.”
Though Loveland is uncertain it can make enough snow to beat last year’s Oct. 7 opening, Loveland and A-Basin are shooting to start their chair lifts in mid-October.
“It will get cold,” said Hierholzer. “We’re not worried.”
For more outdoor news see outtherecolorado.com.
The photo above is from A-Basin's webcam, taken mid-afternoon Sept. 21.
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