Hospitals &Asylums
Chautauqua Homeless Campaign v. Mt. Ashland Defenders
Ashland Watershed Evaluation of Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon HA-20-3-12
By Anthony J. Sanders
Part 1 Ashland Watershed
Chapter 2Mt. Ashland Snow Machine Alternative
Mt. Ashland operates between Sunday November 20 through Sunday April 15, 9am to 4pm with Twilight Skiing from 3pm to 9pm on certain days. Mt. Ashland isclosed on Tuesdays & Wednesdays... but will be open daily through the winter holiday break, December17 - January 1. The U.S. Forest Service Ashland Ranger District, takes annual readings of the snow pack in various locations including the Siskiyou Summit and the Mt. Ashland ski area. As the result of La Nina the first reading taking place at the end of December 2011 revealed the snow pack at the Siskiyou Summit to be 215% of normal with 108” of accumulative snowfall during the Month of December. Making snow is not cheap. It is typically the second-largest cost, after labor, for resorts. New systems can cost $10,000-$20,000 up to $40,000 per acre to install and $1,700 per hour to operate, around 25% of resort operational costs. Snowmaking machinery for Mt. Ashland’s 200 existing acres, not including the 70 acre expansion, would probably cost between $2 million and $4 million to install and presuming 8 hours use on 30 days would cost $408,000 per season to operate, around 25% of the ski resort’s $2 million in revenues. A viability study would require review of historical ski days, temperature, snow accumulation and number of skiers (per diem and annual pass) data for the Mt. Ashland ski resort, to project profits and expenses[1].
Snowmaking is the production of snow by forcing water and pressurized air through a "snow gun" or "snow cannon", on ski slopes. While natural snow is preferable for most resort owners, Mother Nature doesn't provide enough of it in many parts of the world for resorts to open early in the season and survive to early spring.Making artificial snow mimics what happens in nature, but the snow is produced much more quickly: In one method, water is pumped to a snow gun, where compressed air blows the stream of water into tiny particles that are then shot out into the air, where they crystallize and fall to the ground as snow. Snowmaking is mainly used at ski resorts to supplement natural snow. This allows ski resorts to improve the reliability of their snow cover and to extend their ski seasons. Mild winters with little snow once meant financial disaster for the ski industry. But in the past 30 years, the widespread use of snow-making equipment has provided so much stability to a ski resort's season that even traditionalists in the Swiss Alps and British Columbia have decided to install it.In some states, environmental advocates have complained about power consumption and the reduction of water levels in lakes and rivers. A few state environmental agencies have required ski resorts to build large holding ponds to furnish water during parts of the season when natural water levels are low.
Source: Western Regional Climate Center
Temperature records indicate that climate change has caused a slight warming in Rogue Valley. Temperatures are much cooler at the top of Mt. Ashland. We are interested to discover what impact, if any, a snowmaking machine on Mt. Ashland, might have on the air temperature on Mt. Ashland and in the City of Ashland and Rogue Valley? Northern hemisphere spring snow cover has declined about 8% over the period of record 1922–2005. Best estimates of 1 April snow water equivalent (SWE) in the Cascade Mountains of Washington State indicate a substantial (roughly 15–35%) decline from mid-century to 2006, with larger declines at low elevations and smaller declines or increases at high elevations. For the mountainous regions of the western U.S., summers are usually dry and snowmelt provides approximately 70% of annual streamflow. The Cascade and Olympic Mountains of Washington and Oregon stand out as having the highest fraction of warm snow in the continental U.S. The enormous importance of snowmelt for western water resources, and the sensitivity of snow accumulation and melt to air temperature, provide strong motivations for better understanding the role that warming has played in regional changes in snowpack. (Mote ‘08). If the warming trend continues snowmaking machinery may be necessary to keep the Mt. Ashland ski resort open the same number of days. Snow making machinery would immediately extend the number of days the ski resort is able to operate.
Credit: Piping Diagram, Wikipedia
Making snow is not as simple as running water through a hose. A lot depends on the weather, and it is not the temperature on your outside thermometer -- known as the dry bulb temperature -- that is important. What snow-making operators look at is the wet-bulb temperature, which is adjusted for humidity. When the humidity is high, water may not freeze even at temperatures lower than 32 degrees. And when the air is extremely dry, water can freeze even at temperatures higher than 32 degrees. So low air temperatures and low humidity are the optimal conditions for making snow (Selingo ’01). Snowmaking plants require water pumps and air compressors that are both very large and expensive. The production itself requires large amounts of energy. It takes about 200,000 US gallons (757kL) of water to cover an acre to a depth of 1-foot (0.30m). Snowmaking begins with a water supply such as a river or reservoir. Water is pushed up a pipeline on the mountain using very large electric pumps in a pump house. This water is distributed through an intricate series of valves and pipes to any trails that require snowmaking. Many resorts also add a nucleating agent to ensure that as much water as possible freezes and turns into snow. These products are organic or inorganic materials that facilitate the water molecules to form the proper shape to freeze into ice crystals. The products are non-toxic and biodegradable.
The water is sometimes mixed with ina (ice nucleation-active) proteins from the bacterium Pseudomonas syringae. These proteins serve as effective nuclei to initiate the formation of ice crystals at relatively high temperatures, so that the droplets will turn into ice before falling to the ground. The bacterium itself uses these ina proteins in order to injure plants. The bacteria do not grow in temperatures over 82 degrees. Researchers at Virginia Tech have sequenced the DNA of 126 strains of the bacteria.P. syringae also produce Ina proteins which cause water to freeze at fairly high temperatures, resulting in injury to plants. Since the 1970s, P. syringae has been implicated as an atmospheric "biological ice nucleator", with airborne bacteria serving as cloud condensation nuclei. Recent evidence has suggested that the species plays a larger role than previously thought in producing rain and snow. They have also been found in the cores of hailstones, aiding in bioprecipitation. These Ina proteins are used in making artificial snow.
Pseudomonas syringae is a rod shaped, Gram-negative bacterium with polar flagella. It is a plant pathogen which can infect a wide range of plant species, and exists as over 50 different pathovars, all of which are available to researchers via international culture collections such as the NCPPB, ICMP, and others. It is unclear whether these pathovars represent a single species. P. syringae is a member of the Pseudomonas genus. It is named after the lilac tree (Syringa vulgaris), from which it was first isolated. P. syringae, more than any mineral or other organism, is responsible for the surface frost damage in plants, exposed to the environment. P. syringae can cause water to freeze at temperatures as high as −1.8 °C (28.8°F), but strains causing ice nucleation at lower temperatures, down to −8 °C (17.6 ºF) are more common. The freezing causes injuries in the epithelia and makes the nutrients in the underlying plant tissues available to the bacteria. P. syringae have ina (ice nucleation-active) genes that make Ina proteins which translocate to the outer bacterial cell wall on the surface of the bacteria where the Ina proteins act as nuclei for ice formation. Disease by P. syringae tends to be favoured by wet, cool conditions—optimum temperatures for disease tend to be around 12–25°C, although this can vary according to the pathovar involved. The bacteria tend to be seed-borne, and are dispersed between plants via rain splash. Artificial strains of P. syringae known as ice-minus bacteria have been created to reduce frost damage.
The snow cannon was invented by Art Hunt, Dave Richey and Wayne Pierce in 1950, who went on to patent it. In 1952, Grossinger's Catskill Resort Hotel earned a place in the history of skiing as the first in the world to use artificial snow. US Patent 2676471 was issued April 1954 and sold in 1956 to the Emhart Corporation. Joe Tropeano, the owner of the Larchmont Irrigation Company of Boston Mass, had once worked with the Tey Manufacturing Company helping them with the installation snowmaking machines. Tropeano later bought the Tey patent and commenced to make and develop snowmaking equipment. In the 60's, Tropeano and Larchmont started to sue other makers of snowmaking machinery. The Tey patent was then contested and overthrown on the basis on the Canadian research, which had proceeded the patent granted to Wayne Pierce. In 1958, Alden Hanson filed for U.S. Patent #2,968,164 for a fan snowmaker that was issued January 1961. On June 11, 1969, inventors Erikson, Wollin, and Zaunier (Lamont Labs, Columbia University) filed for U.S. Patent #3610527issued October 1971 (which became know as the Wollin patent) for a specially developed rotating fan blade that was impacted with water from the rear, resulting in mechanically atomized water leaving the front which froze and became snow. To prevent any patent infringement dispute with the Hanson patent, Snow Machines International (SMI) founded by Bill Gilbert who had aided the Lamont researchers, signed licensing agreements with both the Hanson and Wollin patent holders.
Credit: Hanson Fan Snowmaker Patent Diagram US2,968,164, About.com
As part of the licensing agreement with Hanson, SMI was subject to inspection by a Hanson representative. The representative turned out to be Jim VanderKelen, who had been the patent attorney for the Hanson patent. In the fall of 1974, Bill Gilbert who no longer wished to develop snowmaking technology further, sold 50 percent of Snow Machines International to Jim VanderKelen. A year later VanderKelen bought the other 50 percent and renamed the company Snow Machines Incorporated (SMI).In 1974, a patent was filed for the Boyne Snowmaker - a ducted fan which isolated the nucleator to the outside of the duct and away from the bulk water nozzles, which were positioned above the centerline and on the downstream edge of the duct. SMI was the licensed manufacturers of the Boyne Snowmaker. In 1978, Bill Riskey and Jim VanderKelen filed a patent later called the Lake Michigan Nucleator - by surrounding the existing nucleator (which required a small amount of air and water) with a water jacket the Lake Michigan Nucleator had none of the freezing problem earlier fan snowmakers sometimes had. In 1992, Jim VanderKelen received a patent for his Silent Storm Snowmaker - a multiple speed fan and a shape of a new style propeller blade. VanderKelen US Patents US05167367 12/01/1992 Snowmaking apparatus and methods; US04214700 07/29/1980Method and apparatus for making snow for ski slopes and the like; US04202496 05/13/1980Snow making system[2].
Credit: SMI Company Catalogue 2010
Fan Guns are much different than all other guns because they require electricity to power a fan and a hose with a spray/mist attachment. The hose sprays a mist, like the kind created from a spray bottle and fans propels the mist into the air to achieve the hang time. Fan guns have anywhere from 12 to 360 water nozzles on a ring that the fan blows through on the front of the gun. These banks can be shut on or off by valves. The valves are either manual, manual electric, or automatic electric (controlled by a computer). A modern snow fan usually consists of one or more rings of nozzles which inject water into the fan air stream. A separate nozzle or small group of nozzles is fed with a mix of water and compressed air and produces the nucleation points for the snow crystals. The small droplets of water and the tiny ice crystals are then mixed and propelled out by a powerful fan, after which they further cool through evaporation in the surrounding air when they fall to the ground. The crystals of ice act as seeds to make the water droplets freeze at 0 °C (32 °F). Without these crystals water would supercool instead of freezing. This method can produce snow when the wet-bulb temperature of the air is as high as -2 °C (28.4 °F). The lower the air temperature, the more and better snow the cannon can make. This is the main reason snow cannons are usually operated in the night. The mix of all water and air streams and their relative pressures is crucial to the amount of snow made and its quality.Modern snow cannons are fully computerized and can operate autonomously or be remotely controlled from a central location. Operational parameters are: starting and stopping time, quality of snow, max. wet bulb temperature in which to operate, max. windspeed, horizontal and vertical orientation, sweeping angle to cover a wider area, sweeping may follow wind direction.
Credit: All-Weather Snowmaker at Pitzal Glacier, Austria; IDE Technology Ltd. Brochure: All Weather Snowmaking: Never Too Warm for Snowmaking; Secure Early Start for Your Snow Season. 2012
IDE Technology, established in 1965, is a world leader in the development and construction of water treatment, desalination, and snowmaking plants with more than 400 plants installed worldwide. The All Weather Snowmaker is capable of producing up to 1,720 m3 (60,741 ft3) per day of high quality environmentallyfriendly snow at all ambient temperatures. The All Weather Snowmaker is based on IDE’s proven Vacuum Ice Maker (VIM) Technology, which has been operating for more than 20 years worldwide. Inside the VIM freezer, water is exposed to deep vacuum. The vacuum forces a small part of the water to evaporate, while the remaining water freezes forming water-snow mixture. The mixture is pumped out from the freezer to a snow concentrator that separates the water from the snow crystals and extracts high grade snow. In order to maintain the deep vacuum in the freezer, the water vapor is continuously evacuated from the freezer, compressed and fed into a condenser by IDE’s unique centrifugal compressor. Condensing of the vapor requires cooling water at 5° C (41°F), which is supplied from a standard water chiller. There are a number of other snowmaking machine companies with similarly impressive number of ski resort clients. The snow machine alternative has about the same short and long term costs as the ski expansion and might be more profitable. The snow machine alternative needs an environmental impact statement regarding its impact on the watershed as well as flood risk.
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[1] Mt. Ashland Ski Area Snow Report historical records should be adequate if Met One Instruments can provide the data mtashland.com
[2] SMI Snowmakers