Found this article. Quite interesting who's on it, and what their capacities are. Some of the western ones surprised me.
https://localfreshies.com/largest-snowmaking-north-america/
Interestingly enough, if the figures are to be believed, Seven Springs can throw out about 2.5x more water per hour than even Killington. (1.8 M gal/hr vs 720K gal/hr)
Though the likes of Killington and 7 Springs would still rank highly, I'd like to see the number of guns and pipes per acre of tral map terrain as a measure. There are some tiny places with pretty massive arsenals allowing them to open up 50% of their terrain in two days of solid cold temps. But, because they are so small they don't show up in the biggest or most guns lists.
What's changed in the last decade or two is how much snowmaking destination resorts like Park City, Snowbird, or even Alta do in order to try to make sure they can open something by Thanksgiving and hopefully have top-to-bottom groomed runs by mid-December, well before the Christmas vacationers show up. Fair to say that every single resort on the multi-resort passes has invested a lot of money in snowmaking infrastructure in recent years. Meaning after the 2008 recession that slowed down the ski industry for a few years.
Snowmaking in the west used to be a 2-month exercise with staff available only Nov and Dec. That's been pushing forward into October and going later into January in some places. Can't remember where, but one resort brings in experienced snowmakers from New Zealand since their season is over by September.
marzNC wrote:
Can't remember where, but one resort brings in experienced snowmakers from New Zealand since their season is over by September.
That would be Loveland I think A-Basin does the same, but I'm less certain of it.
Man made snow also lasts longer during warm spells- something to do with melting water running around the "round" artifically frozen water droplet verse through the generally "flat" natural crystal structure. If you have ever skied on exclusively artificial snow you can feel the difference, like skiing on sugar.
superguy wrote:
Found this article. Quite interesting who's on it, and what their capacities are. Some of the western ones surprised me.
https://localfreshies.com/largest-snowmaking-north-america/
Interestingly enough, if the figures are to be believed, Seven Springs can throw out about 2.5x more water per hour than even Killington. (1.8 M gal/hr vs 720K gal/hr)
I always treat articles about resorts as good examples, but don't necessarily expect the data to be the best or latest info. Gore in NY has installed 312 automated snowguns and also added 85 tower portable fan guns for use in 2018-19. That's for a ski area with about 450 acres. The article says Snowbasin has 540 guns. Of course, the coverage for Snowbasin is a much smaller percentage of the total skiable terrain. The source is On The Snow, which I know has odd data for less well known ski areas. With hundreds of ski areas/resorts just in N. America, it's hard to keep up.
https://www.goremountain.com/mountain/about-us/mountain-improvements
There is a wide range for snow guns output these days. Depends on the lots of factors. SMI is an American company that's based in the midwest. Has good info about the science of snowmaking on their website. Wisp is one of the "success stories" featured.
http://www.snowmakers.com/index.html
