Not Enough Snow for You? Talk to Your Father
THE snowmaking conditions were terrific at the Heaven house a few Sundays ago: it was 17 degrees and very dry, a felicitous temperature-to-humidity ratio that would hold well into the following week. Marshall Heaven, a cheerful 53-year-old real estate developer in a red ski parka, had had his two snow guns running since the previous Friday; the 15-foot Dr. Seussian heap of snow that occupies the Heavens' sloping backyard each year from late November to early April was looking particularly impressive.
Gabby, a 9-month-old cockapoo, was flopping about on and in it, her blond fur crusted with ice. Alexandra Heaven, 4 1/2, was bright pink in the face and just about to her limit; she had been sledding nonstop for two hours. Her mother, Mary Ann, 52, a former television reporter and producer who now works with her husband, scooped up both child and dog and hauled them inside for a warm-up.
For some, Valentine's Day is much too late in the year for their first snow. Since Nature can no longer keep to her early deadlines, men like Mr. Heaven (snowmaking, like barbecuing, is still a gendered hobby) are taking matters into their own hands, and creating their own seasons, at least when it comes to winter.
Snowmaking, since the mid-1960s the provenance of ski resorts and, more recently, some party planners, has gone domestic.
Companies like Snow Economics, a maker and inventor of resort-quality snow machines in Natick, Mass. -- from which Mr. Heaven bought his two Backyard Blizzard snowmakers a few years ago -- have been selling home snowmakers since 2000.
Snow at Home, a Cheshire, Conn., company run by Matt Pittman and Ken Jackie, has been shipping snowmakers for use in backyards from New Jersey to New Zealand for four years; sales are now 'in the hundreds,' Mr. Pittman said.
'We've hit every state but Hawaii,' he said last week.
Mr. Pittman, who was speaking by cellphone, was with a client near Morristown, N.J., helping to put the finishing touches on what was essentially the client's personal resort, he said: a 200-foot-long slope behind the house with a warming hut at its foot and two snow machines at its peak. The previous summer, trees had been cleared and water and power lines buried below the soil's frost line, ready to hook up to two of Mr. Pittman's machines. 'New Jersey is a big area for us,' Mr. Pittman said. 'There's no snow, and lots of disposable income.'
David Young, 38, who owns two Snow at Home machines, lives 15 minutes by car from Atlantic City; he has been making snow in his backyard for three years. Early last week he had two feet of snow; one day last week he took a personal day from his boat repair business to make snow all day, he said.
'It's hard to stop when the weather is right,' he said. 'You can set the guns up and go to sleep, but I like to go and mess with them. My neighbors are going to work at the casinos at 3 a.m. and I'm out there, too, messing with the guns. I just like being out in it. It's really hard to turn the guns off; it looks so good piling up.'
When real snow falls, Mr. Young said, 'my daughter thinks I made it.'
When you mix real snow with machine snow, Mr. Heaven said, the real stuff, which is lighter and fluffier, falls to the side and creates a cushion. 'It's great for when the kids are playing king of the mountain,' he said. 'They have this soft powder to fall in.'
Those who make snow are proud of their powder. They speak passionately about its stacking qualities (it is denser than snow that starts out in a cloud) and bandy about terms like nucleation and wet bulb temperature. Forums like snowguns.com, which has over 3,700 members, show a subculture as much into the process of snowmaking as the result of it. There are discussions about how to build your own rope tow and lengthy back-and-forths about the attributes of various snow wand nozzles.
Still, size matters to a snowmaker. Mr. Young dreams of a 'bigger vertical,' he said. 'Everyone who makes snow wants a larger hill.'
Mr. Heaven dreams of a commercial machine, an 18-nozzle gun that would make a hill like his in an hour, he said. 'It's a serious commitment,' he said, and it would require a concrete platform to mount the thing, which costs about $30,000. 'It's a whole different story,' he said, indicating that his wife was not yet on board with a system upgrade.
'It's his avocation,' Ms. Heaven said. 'And I indulge him in it, the same way he indulges me by letting me have a pink house.'
The Heavens' house, a late-19th-century carriage house they doubled the size of last year, is a pink-and-white gingerbread-style confection that cries out for the sort of frosty ground and tree cover Mr. Heaven's machines can make. Inside, there are pink Aubusson rugs and gilded walls; a ceiling fresco featuring many fat putti is in the works for the front hall; and a pair of Italian gilded angel wings sits in a wall niche made just for them.
'Mount Heaven was a no-brainer,' said Ms. Heaven, referring to her name for the snow hill her husband made, and pointing to the peak from her daughter's bedroom window upstairs. 'You've got a lot to work with when you have a name like ours.'
As global warming continues to wreak havoc with the weather, snowmakers impose a nostalgic order -- albeit one that does nothing to help the situation, since snowmaking runs on electricity (and water, of course, one and a half to six gallons a minute, depending on the size of the machine). Charles Santry, president of Snow Economics, said his Backyard Blizzard Sport machine, which has a 1.5 horsepower engine, can use up to 1,650 watts. A clothes dryer guzzles more power, but snowmaking is certainly not going to win any green awards.
In fact, snowmaking requires 'traditional' winter weather -- that is, temperatures well below freezing. And last year New York and Connecticut were two of the five states that posted their warmest Decembers on record.
Mount Heaven melted twice that month, Mr. Heaven said ruefully.
'I love the cold,' he said. 'I love winter.'
Indeed, Mr. Heaven loves all weather, whatever form it comes in. (In high school he wrote a weather column for the school newspaper called Heaven's Heaven.) He was happily monitoring this week's event.
'It's a complicated storm,' he said yesterday, reporting no melting whatsoever on Mount Heaven. 'But even if it rains, we won't suffer any snowpack loss. The mound is so dense it will just firm it up more.'
Mr. Heaven turned his guns on again yesterday afternoon. He was eager to make more snow.