Worms and Snow

Worms crawling(I believe that is how they get around) across your driveway? To my blogger friend that experienced that, I would agree that cannot be a January reality!!!! Someone tricked you and I into believing it is January. I was leaving the area the other night and I had insects hitting my windshield on the drive home...... That, like worms on the driveway does not fit with January. As we exit January, we experience day #40 of consecutive days of much above normal temps. Good riddance to January and let us hope February is kinder to us snow-lovers.

In terms of making snow, we tried last night........ We came in about 3 am when the temps dropped to 27 degrees........ Had about a 4 hour window that snowmaking looked possible as the coldest part of the day is right before sunrise typically. I never happened. It stayed at 27 until 5am and then started to rise as the light breeze took on a southerly tilt and clouds moved in. Temp had risen to 30 by 7am and the attempt at snowmaking harvested very little for our effort. Another strike against us last night was high humidity(about94%). The colder the air the better the snowmaking. The drier the air the better the snowmaking.
We typically like to start making snow when the Wet Bulb temp reaches 24 degrees. When temps get down below 20, then we can really start producing volumes of snow. At any given temp, a lower humidity reading only adds to our ability to increase production. If I had a choice, I would love to have a 15 degree night with humidity under 60%. Now that is some great snowmaking. If you would like check out www.wkiwnowstar.com and click on the snowmaking page for an article I wrote this summer........
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