Scientists put a man on the moon. They built bombs that can destroy entire planets. You’d think they could figure out more urgent problems, like ending our dependency on oil, and how to keep snow on the ground year-round. Well, as far as I can tell we’re going to be guzzling Crude for the foreseeable future, but the snow thing, well, there just might be a way.
Scientists in Spain found a way to make ice at room temperature. Room temperature! Thing about what that would mean for the snow sports industries! Yes. Snow. In. June. Everywhere. A lot of big words summarize:
Researchers at Spain’s Centre d’Investigació en Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (CIN2) have studied the underlying mechanisms of water condensation in the troposphere and found a way to make artificial materials to control water condensation and trigger ice formation at room temperature. Described in the Journal of Chemical Physics, which is published by the American Institute of Physics, their work may lead to new additives for snowmaking, improved freezer systems, or new coatings that help grow ice for skating rinks.
W-w-what? It means they make ice at temperatures above freezing. How they do it, I have no idea and I really don’t care as long as they can put man-made snow anywhere, anytime!
So I know this has only been done in a lab by a bunch of geeks in labcoats, and that the practical, real-world applications of making snow in June is probably a not-in-my-lifetime possibility, but a guy can dream about snow guns firing off powder clouds in the Midwest during the summer amiright?
If this is scalable, we could see longer ski/snowboard seasons even at considerably lower altitudes (Midwest, Northeast, Southeast?) and the indoor application really becomes more viable. Right now a snow dome needs to keep temps at or below freezing but if they could make snow at 55F instead of 30 they’d save sh’load on refrigerant and cooling systems. This could make indoor fridges a lot more economically viable and that would be awesome to see fridges and snow domes popping up all over the U.S. and Canada. They could make bigger and better indoor facilities, which can only be a good thing for snowboarders and the snow sports industries.
The picture is from an 84 degree day at April 2 at Nubs Nob in Northern Michigan, where there was more dirt than snow. Maybe someday in the future, it will be the other way around.
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