Weather
Snowmaking began in Summit County, Colorado when Arapahoe Basin Ski Area fired up eight snowmaking guns early Friday morning. This is the earliest in 10-seasons.
A-Basin’s snowmaking team covered a mid-mountain area at the top of the High Noon trail with the beautiful, beautiful white stuff. On average snowmaking begins in the first few days of October, so the team has a good week’s headstart on ‘normal’.
“We fired up last night,” A-Basin chief operating officer Alan Henceroth wrote on his blog. “The wet bulb temperature got down to 25 (degrees Fahrenheit) for about six hours. The snowmakers have been training and testing for the last week. They put a little bit of snow on the ground.
Though A-Basin has approximately 25 total snow guns in its fleet, the ski area only runs the ones located where the temperatures are optimal.
The annual ‘Race to Open‘ has begun, with A-Basin battling it out with neighboring Loveland to be the first North American resort to start lifts turning and signal the start of the winter season. A-Basin does have the edge the previous few years, but Loveland fired the first warning shots last week with social media images of them getting their snow-guns ready. It looks like A-Basin is the first to lay snow though.
Long range weather forecasts currently indicate a small chance of natural snowfall in the area. The area did report snowfall on September 5.
This season, 100 percent of the energy used for A-Basin’s snowmaking system is coming from renewable solar energy.
