Snow

[Derek]

Spend most of my free cash (joke) and the few spare evenings perfecting my snowboarding tecnique or falling down with style.

Currently using a local indoor snow dome with real soft stuff but the quality varies from crispy alpine pieste to quicksand.

Anyone have any idea how you calculate the optimum conditions for optimum 'snow'. I can create the stuff at lab level but these places are working with tons and don't seem to have any dare I say quality control.

What makes good snow?

(What ever after a few dislocated digits on dry slopes even quicksand snow seems good)

[Dan]

Derek, I think you have a good question there. But you have to define what good snow is, don't you?

I will start with questions.

Is good snow the snow that is on the ground?

Does it have anything to do with the way the snow delivers itself?

Does good snow have anything to do with the air temperature?

Is good snow the powdery snow?

Does good snow rely on snow beneth it?

Etc. LOL.


The eskimos have at least a hundred descriptions of snow, and they don't snowboard.

I would guess that to produce a powdery snow... would include a rapid crystallization of otherwise dry air and deliver it to a surface well below zero without going above freezing during the process.

Large cyrstals make good snow when they collect on cold surfaces and are ushered properly through freezing air.

I am guessing this, not answering so much. It's a good question.

[Dan]

Good snow to me in St. Louis, way back when, was snow we could turn into snowmen or snowballs. Wet snow is good snow in the midwest for us children.

I am thinking that means the snow formed well, but delivered itself to warm ground and air. I remember snowflakes the size of my thumbnail.... collected crystals collecting. On warm days....
Fluffy flakes that evanesce after they collected a myriad of other flakes... what we call "air" crystallizing

How odd, to think that there is a good snow and a bad snow. The worst snow in St. Louis is a powdery snow. The worst snow in the mountains is the snow that is the best snow in St. Louis.

There's snow business like snow business.