THE LIFE
I
42 March 2019 _ PopularMechanics.com PHOTOGRAPHS BY JAIME DEE WILSON
Adventures in making
your own weather.
/ BY EZRA DYER /SOLD MY SKIS before I moved to
North Carolina. That turned out
to be a dumb move, because this
subtropical state actually has the
highest mountains on the East
Coast, and it gets plenty cold from
December through February. For a
few months each winter, you can go
skiing and snow tubing and sledding.
But you’ll likely be doing these things
at a place with man-made snow.
You can count on the cold—where I
live, one recent February averaged
27 degrees for the entire month—
but you can’t count on the snow. The
weather runs either cold and clear or
wet and warm.
Still, about once a year, the forces
align for a snowstorm, by which I
mean an inch or three. School is can-
celed and a local golf course morphsinto a ski lodge as kids sled down the
hill at the driving range and parents
cluster around the fireplace at the
bar. It’s great fun. After a few years
in North Carolina, I began to have a
thought that had never entered my
brain in 30 years of living in New Eng-
land: If only it snowed more.
A few winters ago, as I watched my
kids attempt backyard sledding atop
a pathetic crust of ice that barely cov-
ered the grass, I wondered if there was
a way to crowbar nature into giving us
more. Man-made snow is possible,
and I wanted to make it.BUT HOW? Do you buy equipment
from a defunct ski resort? Can you
just spray a pressure washer in the
air? I realized I have no idea how
snowmakers work. But on a cold win-The
Home
Snow
Gun