Basically all of the snow Olympic athletes will be competing on will be human-made. Though artificial snow and natural snow are both frozen water, most skiers and snowboarders are able to immediately recognize that the two are very different.
The following essay is reprinted with permission from The Conversation, an online publication covering the latest research.
I am an atmospheric scientist who specializes in mountain weather and snow. I am also the founder of a snowmaking startup and an avid skier. There are distinct differences between natural and artificial snow, and it will be interesting to see if these differences have any effect on competition.How to make fake snow Though artificial snow and natural snow are both frozen water, most skiers and snowboarders are able to immediately recognize that the two are very different.
Without these particles, water struggles to turn into ice. Different particles can raise or lower freezing temperatures depending on their specific molecular configuration. By comparison, human-made snow freezes quickly from a single droplet of water. The resulting snow consists of billions of tiny spherical balls of ice. It may resemble natural snow to the naked eye on a ski run, but the natural and artificial snow “feel” very different.
Another consideration is the fact that natural snowstorms produce dull, flat lighting and low visibility—hard conditions to race or jump in. Heavy natural snowfall will often cancel ski races, as happened during the snowy 1998 Nagano Games. For racers, clear skies and artificial snow provide the advantage there, too.
Scientists have been trying for decades to create more natural snow on demand. The first way that people tried to make “real” snow was by seeding natural clouds with silver iodide. The goal was to facilitate moisture in clouds turning into falling snow crystals. If you could make this process—called the Wegener-Bergeron-Findeisen process—occur more easily, it would theoretically increase the snowfall rate.
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