The snowmaking fieldbook
The making of snow.
Inside the cannon. Across the mountain. From a drop of water to the piste beneath your skis.
01 / The machine
Inside the snow cannon
Interactive schematic · generic equipment
02 / The weather window
Snowmaking weather
Compare the remaining night or the next 48 hours at three elevations in Saalbach–Hinterglemm.
Saalbach–Hinterglemm · Europe/Vienna · complete forecast hours
Nov 3, 18:00 → Nov 4, 08:00
1,500 m · Select an hour to inspect
Wet-bulb estimate · °C · Complete forecast
Forecast hour
Nov 3, 18:00
Above threshold
- Air temperature
- -0.1 °C
- Relative humidity
- 91.2%
- Wind speed
- 1.4 m/s
- Wet-bulb estimate
- -0.9 °C
Longest window: 7 h · Nov 4, 01:00 → Nov 4, 08:00
Issued Nov 3, 14:17 · MET Norway · CC BY 4.0
Actual cannon activity and produced snow volumes are unavailable. Open the official snow report (English) ↗
Scenario
What makes a cold enough night?
Change temperature and humidity to see why the thermometer alone does not tell the whole story.
-5.8 °CWet-bulb estimate
Colder window · ≤ −5°C
03 / The production notebook · Scenario
Build a snow scenario
Set your own equipment and piste assumptions. The result is a mass-balance scenario, independent of the forecast.
Water losses, density and power
Retention starts at 75% as an illustrative assumption. SLF reports field-study water losses of 15–40%; local losses vary with conditions and equipment.
Scenario · 10,000 m²
Equivalent spread depth
- Snow volume
- 384 m³
- Water supplied
- 230.4 m³
- Electricity scenario
- 880 kWh
- Running time for target
- 62.5 h
- Water needed for target
- 1,800 m³
Uniform coverage at the selected density. Excludes later melt, redistribution and grooming changes. Flow and power are your assumptions, not machine specifications.
04 / From water to piste
Same water. Different snow.
For 1 m³ of water, density determines the volume. These examples assume all water is retained.
Water
1 m³ · 1,000 kg/m³
Light fresh snow
10 m³ · 100 kg/m³
Dense technical snow
2.2 m³ · 450 kg/m³
Illustrative densities, not measured snow conditions. Real snow density changes with weather, settling and grooming.
- 01
Read the weather
Temperature and humidity determine the wet-bulb estimate. Water supply, wind and equipment settings also matter.
- 02
Make the ice seeds
Nucleators provide the tiny ice particles that help droplets freeze.
- 03
Give droplets time
The fan’s throw or the lance’s height gives the droplets time to cool in the air.
- 04
Prepare the piste
Snow is distributed and groomed. Depth, coverage and an opening decision require local checks.
Sources & method
Weather screening uses Stull (2011), with the same −2°C wet-bulb threshold as the existing PisteWindow weather view. The ≤ −5°C band highlights colder hours, not a production rate. Only unique, valid, complete hourly intervals from issues no older than 24 hours are used. Missing hours break a continuous window. Tonight is the remaining 18:00–08:00 window in Europe/Vienna. Wind is shown, but no universal wind cutoff is assumed. Equipment, water supply and operations are not connected.
Water volume = guns × litres/second × 3.6 × hours. Retained mass = water volume × 1,000 × retention. Snow volume = retained mass ÷ density. Spread depth = snow volume ÷ area. Electricity = (guns × power per gun + shared pump power) × hours. No output curve, cost, opening probability or operational recommendation is inferred.
Retention starts at 75% as an illustrative assumption. SLF reports field-study water losses of 15–40%; local losses vary with conditions and equipment.