Killllington 🎿🏂🏂🎿🎿🏂🏂🎿😀

[BodeMiller1]

1st race at Killington, but, if the conditions permit it will be the women's 4th race of the season as they have a paralell SL in Lech, Austria on November 12th and then 2 slaloms in Levi, Finland on November 19 and 20.

Hopefully the weather will let those happen as while they had snow for their scheduled opener in Solden, Austria about 10 days ago, the weather that day didn't allow for that GS to happen and then they don't have the snow at the bottom of the course to let the downhills that are scheduled for this coming weekend in Switzerland and Italy (the start was scheduled to be in Switzerland and the course took it down to a finish across the border in Italy) to happen and both those men's and women's races have been cancelled

My bad, thanks for correcting. Meow

 

[BodeMiller1]

Live webcam has changed. An old winter "guy" in the house?

 

[machski]

It will be November 12, the day I go back to work after vacation. You're all welcome

 

[IceEidolon]

For sure not gospel but it's as close as you can get to a baseline and the early season stuff would be on the wet end of the scale for sure.

Torrent had an older study that went from 160 to 300 which was superseded by one with 180 to 200 as the standard: http://www.torrentee.com/pdf/Snow-water_conversion_chart.pdf

Ratnik latest is at 180 in average: http://ratnik.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/Snow-Science_updated.pdf

We always used 200 for capacity planning.

They shoot for 48" minimum across the venue the estimated snowmaking time is around 100 hours in ideal temps.

https://www.grandvalira.com/en/node/1604013 indicates a minimum depth of 40 cm for FIS approval, though obviously the ideal is quite a bit more than that. A 4' target is quite different to a 4' minimum. If they get a hundred hours plus I'm not trying to suggest they wouldn't use them productively.

 

[IceEidolon]

Killington claims 54 acre-feet required here: https://www.saminfo.com/archives/item/165124-ice-that-s-nice

That's 11m gallons give or take at 200,000 gal per acre foot. That means over their claimed 130 hour timeline they'd get an average of 1,400 GPM onto the trail - or, with their claimed 120 guns, an average of below 12 GPM per gun. I suspect they're actually running wetter than 200,000 gallons per acre foot. I also recall them beating that 130 hour timeline on more than one occasion, and that timeline likely accounts for startup/shutdown, which I'd excluded.

 

[drjeff]

Killington claims 54 acre-feet required here: https://www.saminfo.com/archives/item/165124-ice-that-s-nice

That's 11m gallons give or take at 200,000 gal per acre foot. That means over their claimed 130 hour timeline they'd get an average of 1,400 GPM onto the trail - or, with their claimed 120 guns, an average of below 12 GPM per gun. I suspect they're actually running wetter than 200,000 gallons per acre foot. I also recall them beating that 130 hour timeline on more than one occasion, and that timeline likely accounts for startup/shutdown, which I'd excluded.

As I recall, they had a couple of years where the actual temps during a forceasted window ended up much more favorable than the mets thought and the firepower of that set up on Superstar was able to run full out for longer.

 

[BodeMiller1]

Killington invented Super - Max an additive that allows the guns to run with lots more air (I'm guessing) and less H2O. They can make snow up to 35ish?
Butt again, this won't get it done.
Does FIS let them ski in Shorts?

 

[MidnightJester]

Wonder what the cost is compared to regular snowmaking with this technology.

Small Ski Area Debuts Snowmaking Tech That Works In All Temperatures

Man-made snowmaking systems are absolutely necessary to make ski areas commercially viable in the mid-Atlantic. The varying temps and poor average annual snowfall mean that most ski areas rely on snowmaking to keep the lights on. The one downside to snowmaking, if you want to look at it that...

unofficialnetworks.com

 

[icecoast1]

Wonder what the cost is compared to regular snowmaking with this technology.

Small Ski Area Debuts Snowmaking Tech That Works In All Temperatures

Man-made snowmaking systems are absolutely necessary to make ski areas commercially viable in the mid-Atlantic. The varying temps and poor average annual snowfall mean that most ski areas rely on snowmaking to keep the lights on. The one downside to snowmaking, if you want to look at it that...

unofficialnetworks.com

Mt. Van Hoevenberg’s Snow Factory a ‘Game Changer’ – FasterSkier.com

fasterskier.com

another version of that was half a mil... several years ago. Awfully expensive for 1 snowgun especially for the amount it produces

 

[MidnightJester]

So the 7-10 day long range forecast for Killington(town) shows a cooling trend coming in at night with good night windows for snowmaking. Maybe even a little mother's nature help with a few real flakes. Going to be close but If they can get even half the snow depth of what they need by the 16th of November they will pull off the Women's world cup race. I think lol. No extra warming or warm rain included.
Wonder when the first inspections? or cut off date for Killington to show snow and the race course?

 

[Rogman]

Even if you hate Killington, and rven if you don’t care about the World Cup, you should still root for Killington to pull it off because it’s good for northeast skiing, the much maligned red headed step child of North American skiing.

 

[MidnightJester]

Even if you hate Killington, and rven if you don’t care about the World Cup, you should still root for Killington to pull it off because it’s good for northeast skiing, the much maligned red headed step child of North American skiing.

Its great for the north east skiing and riding. 30,000 plus people over a weekend is something very few North East mountains or towns could accommodate.
Beast of the East : )

 

[ss20]

So the 7-10 day long range forecast for Killington(town) shows a cooling trend coming in at night with good night windows for snowmaking. Maybe even a little mother's nature help with a few real flakes. Going to be close but If they can get even half the snow depth of what they need by the 16th of November they will pull off the Women's world cup race. I think lol. No extra warming or warm rain included.
Wonder when the first inspections? or cut off date for Killington to show snow and the race course?
View attachment 54948

Yes there is some borderline cold air coming middle of the month. Too little too late, IMO. If it was an arctic blast with highs in the 20s and lows in the single digits I'd say they have a chance. Unfortunately I think with the time remaining all the discussions about what they can do in marginal conditions are moot. Marginal snowmaking after a 65 degree hot shower the day before, I will add.

We are getting plenty of snow and cold out here. Wish I could send you guys some. Always hated warm Novembers/Decembers. Reminds me too much of 2015/2016, which I hope will never happen again in my lifetime.

 

[slatham]

It’s November 3rd. Rumors of the death of the WC are premature………

 

[Great Bear]

It’s November 3rd. Rumors of the death of the WC are premature………

Agreed - the pictures of Superstar last year on Nov 13 tell quite a bit of what Killington is capable of if they get the right temps.

Does anyone have a memory of what the temperatures did after November 13th that allowed them to build up the base so quickly? Right now the 10 day (to me as a non snowmaker and non weather expert) still looks somewhat marginal Nov 13-Nov 17.

 

[drjeff]

Agreed - the pictures of Superstar last year on Nov 13 tell quite a bit of what Killington is capable of if they get the right temps.

Does anyone have a memory of what the temperatures did after November 13th that allowed them to build up the base so quickly? Right now the 10 day (to me as a non snowmaker and non weather expert) still looks somewhat marginal Nov 13-Nov 17.

Don't remember the exact temps in that time frame last year, but I seem to recall that the temps that week last year were good enough to let multiple resorts open up for the season that weekend before Thanksgiving, so that would infer that not only did they get some decent/good temps but they also had plenty of hours with those good temps tp run that system wide open

 

[Newpylong]

Agreed - the pictures of Superstar last year on Nov 13 tell quite a bit of what Killington is capable of if they get the right temps.

Does anyone have a memory of what the temperatures did after November 13th that allowed them to build up the base so quickly? Right now the 10 day (to me as a non snowmaker and non weather expert) still looks somewhat marginal Nov 13-Nov 17.

Very cold for November.

 

[slatham]

My notes from Sunday of thanksgiving was Bromley only had one trail open - typically 2 - but were close on several others and they had 9-11” on Friday of Thanksgiving. If memory serves there were many days where K could only make snow on upper SS but they got a cold windows low down and crushed it. People were speculating that that if they didn’t get temps low they could make enough snow on top 1/2 or 3/4 and push down. Luckily didn’t come to that.

Big turn around the 15th last year. Possible repeat his year.

 

[IceEidolon]

Killington invented Super - Max an additive that allows the guns to run with lots more air (I'm guessing) and less H2O. They can make snow up to 35ish?
Butt again, this won't get it done.
Does FIS let them ski in Shorts?

Are you thinking of Snowmax?

 

[Abubob]

Even if you hate Killington, and rven if you don’t care about the World Cup, you should still root for Killington to pull it off because it’s good for northeast skiing, the much maligned red headed step child of North American skiing.

If anyone can prepare a bare slope for an FIS even in a week it's gotta be Killington. There's time and long range temperature forecast make it look close but doable.