{"id":15116,"date":"2018-02-23T19:48:33","date_gmt":"2018-02-23T19:48:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/2018\/02\/23\/despite-frigid-weather-the-snow-in-pyeongchang-is-fake\/"},"modified":"2018-02-23T19:48:33","modified_gmt":"2018-02-23T19:48:33","slug":"despite-frigid-weather-the-snow-in-pyeongchang-is-fake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/associatednews.us\/content\/despite-frigid-weather-the-snow-in-pyeongchang-is-fake\/","title":{"rendered":"Despite Frigid Weather, The Snow In Pyeongchang Is Fake"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Samantha Raphelson<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

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\n Elvedina Muzaferija of Bosnia and Herzegovina start a run during Alpine Skiing women’s downhill training on day 10 of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Jeongseon Alpine Centre on Feb. 19, 2018 in Pyeongchang, South Korea.<\/p>\n

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Alexander Hassenstein\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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Alexander Hassenstein\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

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If you’ve been watching the Winter Games on TV, you may have noticed there’s not a lot of snow in Pyeongchang. While the South Korean region is known for its frigid winters, major snowstorms are rare<\/a> in February.<\/p>\n

That’s where Snow Making Inc. (SMI), comes in. The Michigan-based company has installed<\/a> snow-making machines at seven Winter Olympics, including Pyeongchang.<\/p>\n

“Depending on which venue it is, we estimate between 90 and 98 percent of the snow that’s there has been machine-made and produced in advance of the games,” Joe VanderKelen, president of SMI, tells Here & Now’s<\/em> Jeremy Hobson.<\/p>\n

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The Games’ organizers spent<\/a> nearly $6 million to bring in snow cannons, which push cold water and pressurized air through a “snow gun” to produce artificial snow. At past Olympics in Sochi and Vancouver, the host cities also deployed<\/a> fake snow on mountain ranges due to unseasonably warmer weather.<\/p>\n

“Machine-made snow is like one-week or two-week-old natural snow that’s been sitting there and takes a while to go into a different grain size, and actually can become a better surface once it’s tilled for the athletes,” VanderKelen says.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, athletes prefer manufactured snow because it is more consistent, he adds. When preparing the courses, organizers will actually push off natural snow before spreading the fake stuff.<\/p>\n

“The racers like a very hard surface that minimizes rutting, so that between the 40 and 60 competitors that might race they’re trying to keep that surface as consistent as they can as they carve those gates and those corners,” VanderKelen says. “So they really like a very hard surface, and they don’t like natural snow at all.”<\/p>\n