Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe is laying down the base for a winter wonderland. Marketing Director Mike Pierce said with forecasted freezing temperatures this weekend, the resort will be running snow machines nonstop.
“If there’s a four-hour window where it’s below freezing, real low humidity and hardly any wind, we’ll crank them up," he told 2 News on Thursday. "It puts moisture in the mountain. Even if we know some of it’s going to melt, we want the ground to get frozen so that when the snow does come, it sticks.”
He added that the snow machines make genuine snow, no chemicals added. Water from a hose passes through a nozzle that breaks the droplets down into particles. When those particles hit the freezing air, they turn to snowflakes.
“Snow making is just our insurance policy," Pierce said. "If it was just up to natural snow, then your sort of at the mercy of the elements.”
Weather permitting, Mt. Rose Ski Tahoe is aiming to open the resort by early November.
Though, Pierce said, “If we can get open early, we’ll take it.”
