The weekend saw a fresh dusting of snow cover mountain resorts, but the season had a lot less promising beginning. In a large portion of the country’s south, the first month of winter saw the driest June on record, and July brought unprecedented heat and little rain. Nevertheless, despite such circumstances, several of the top alpine resorts reported that business was basically as usual, with typical tourist numbers. This is so that ski runs may be covered even in the absence of snowfall from Mother Nature, thanks to significant investments made by Australian ski resorts in the development of snowmaking equipment.

For the first time this season, certain slopes have installed a new generation of snowmaking equipment that can create artificial snow in virtually any weather. And with forecasts that climate change will shorten Australia’s ski seasons, resorts are investing heavily in expanding their snowmaking infrastructure to ensure that the sector can continue luring travelers to alpine regions during the winter. In a warming climate, experts believe major dumps like the one over the weekend will still occur, but top-up snowfalls throughout the season will be less frequent.

Fresh Equipment Making Snow

This year, other mountains outside Mt. Buller have also begun using snow maker machine. A comparable approach has been implemented on a smaller scale at the considerably more modest, family-oriented Selwyn Snow Resort in the Snowy Mountains of New South Wales. According to Colin Hackworth, CEO of the Australian Ski Areas Association, which advocates for ski lift operators, more resorts will follow following and make investments in the technology, which he likens to an industrial ice-cream churner in terms of how it operates.

You plug it in, add water to one side, and a rotating drum inside freezes the water before spitting it out the other end as ice particles, the man explained. In particular, Mr. Hackworth believes that early in the season, when there is excitement about going skiing but frequently little natural snowfall, this method of creating snow could be a game changer for resorts. “At 30 degrees Celsius, this will cause snow to form. You can start producing these substantial ice chip heaps in April and May, and they are incredibly durable. It takes a while for them to dissolve “explained he.

“You put them all to sleep with a machine as the ski season approaches so you have guaranteed snow.” Future years will see snow covering the ground in all of the resorts. It will soon be customary for the ski season to include June. Before it, it was very uncertain. From the early days of snowmaking, when manually controlled snow gun systems were utilized to top up natural snowfall, this represents a significant advancement. The use of automated devices with built-in weather stations has replaced manual snow guns, which required someone to go turn the faucet on and off in the middle of the night, according to Mr. Hackworth.

Adaptation To Climate Change

Although Australian ski seasons have always been incredibly unpredictable from year to year, the long-term tendency for natural snowfall is away from increasing amounts. According to the CSIRO’s most recent climate change modeling, the average snow season in Victoria and some of New South Wales will shrink by 20 to 55 days under a low-risk scenario, and by 30 to 80 days under a worst-case scenario.

An investigation into how climate change might affect the state’s alpine resorts, commissioned by Victoria’s Alpine Resorts Co-ordinating Council and released last year, revealed that since the 1960s, seasons have been shorter and there has been less total snow depth. While the winter weather was predicted to grow increasingly unpredictable, that tendency was predicted to accelerate. It wasn’t a promising future, according to Ian Swan, executive officer of the council. According to Mr. Swan, “the consensus is that you will still get cold fronts that will move through and drop a lot of snow.”