BALTIMORE — Whether you’re a skier, snowboarder, or just like a picturesque winter view, snow is critical. That’s why Whitetail Resort, like many others, has a snow-making system. Tim Koons, General Manager of the resort, tells us a bit about their system.
“Well, we have one of the biggest systems in the Mid-Atlantic. Made up of two different types of guns, we have the air-water guns and the fan guns.”
Both of these snow guns use a mixture of compressed air and water when the conditions are just right to create snow for the slopes. But what would those conditions be?
“Well, the ideal conditions would be 24 degrees... 50 percent humidity, but the cool thing is we can make snow really up to and above freezing depending on the humidity. That’s why humidity is such an important part of snow-making”, says Koons.
The system from there relies on evaporative cooling which gives the snow guns an extra hand when creating new snow in non-ideal conditions.
"Every one of these fan guns has an on-board weather station that will measure temperature, humidity and they self-adjust to allow more and less water flow depending on the temps, humidity those kinds of things. The other thing is that we have stations around the mountain. I can look on my phone and know seven different places on the mountain what the temperature is. Like in the middle of the night last night, I knew we could make snow on the top, but we couldn’t make snow at the bottom, and the guys got right on that and we’re making snow at the top as soon as the temperatures dropped," explains Koons.
But even with some flexibility, snow-making in the Mid-Atlantic- just like getting a snowstorm- can be very hit or miss.
"We’re still able to blow snow even though it’s thirty-seven degrees out right now because it’s fifty-six percent humidity," says Koons.
Whitetail Resort takes advantage of every snow-making opportunity when possible, which it can store and use for later when there is no chance to make snow.
“When we do have those opportunities, we stockpile snow in a lot of different places. Sometimes on the trail by making sections of the trail thicker, sometimes off the trail or at the top, or bottom of the mountain by the lifts. We stockpile it in wells and then we can push it out to make full coverage of the slope,” says Koons.
*This story has been edited to fix a name in the article. The name said in the video is incorrect.*
