The Brief

Trudging across the top of Bromley Mountain Ski Resort on a sunny afternoon in January, Matt Folts checks his smartwatch and smiles: 14 degrees Fahrenheit. That is very nearly his favorite temperature for making snow. It’s cold enough for water to quickly crystallize, but not so cold that his hourslong shifts on the mountain are miserable.

Folts is the head snowmaker at Bromley, a small ski area on the southern end of Vermont’s Green Mountains. The burly 35-year-old sports a handlebar mustache, an orange safety jacket, and thick winter boots that crunch in the snow as he walks. A blue hammer swings from his belt.

It is nearing the end of the day for skiers, but not for Folts. He’ll work well into the evening preparing the mountain for tomorrow’s crowd. Cutting across the entrances to Sunder and Corkscrew, he heads toward a stubby snow gun used to blanket Blue Ribbon, an experts-only trail named in honor of Bromley’s founder, Fred Pabst Jr. The apparatus stands a few feet high, with three legs and a metal head that’s angled toward the sky. Two lines that resemble fire hoses supply the device with water and compressed air, which it uses to hiss precipitation into the air. As the water droplets fall, they coalesce into snowflakes.

“If it was warmer I’d be a yeti,” says Folts, referring to wetter snow that, if conditions were just a bit balmier, would leave him abominably white. But at these temperatures the powder he’d just made bounced lightly off his sleeve. “That’s perfect.”

Yet perfect fake fluff like Folts’ poses a climate conundrum. On one hand, making snow requires enormous amounts of energy, which creates planet-warming emissions. On the other, a warming planet means that artificial snow is increasingly essential to an industry that, while admittedly a luxury, pumps over $20 billion annually into ski towns nationwide. The good news is that, in the face of these growing threats, resorts have been dramatically improving the efficiency of their snowmaking operations — a move they hope will help them outrun rising temperatures.

American ski areas logged more 65 million visits last season. A sizable chunk of those likely came during Christmas week, when a resort can make — or lose — a third or more of its annual revenue. The Martin Luther King Jr. and Presidents Day weekends are similarly vital. But ensuring that there’s a surface to slide on is an increasingly fickle business.

Snowpack in the Western U.S. has already declined by 23 percent since 1955, and climbing temperatures have pushed the snowline in Lake Tahoe, California — which is home to more than a dozen resorts — from 1,200 to 1,500 feet. A recent study found that much of the Northern Hemisphere is headed off a “snow-loss cliff” where even marginal increases in temperature could prompt a dramatic loss of snow.

Matt Folts checks a snowmaking gun that is blowing fresh flake on the Blue Ribbon trail at Bromley Mountain Ski Resort. Tik Root / Grist

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Grist

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By one estimate, only about half of the ski areas in the Northeast will be economically viable by mid-century. Research suggests that Vermont’s ski season could be two to four weeks shorter by 2080, while another study found that Canada’s snowmaking needs will increase 67 to 90 percent by 2050. At Bromley, snow guns have been essential for years; without them, the resort’s mid-January trail count would have likely been in the single digits, rather than 31.

Opening terrain, however, comes at a cost. It takes a lot of horsepower to move water up the hill under pressure, and compress the air the guns need to function. Bromley’s relatively small operation, which produces enough snow each season to cover about 135 acres in three or more feet of the stuff, chews through enough electricity each year to power about 100 homes. All that juice adds nearly half a million dollars to the resort’s utility bill.

But Bill Cairns, Bromley’s president and general manager, says the system is actually much more efficient than it was just a decade ago. “I used to spend about $800,000,” he says. He’s now able to produce more snow for around half the price. “The reduction in cost with snowmaking has totally been a game changer.”

Mastering the 'black art'

Powder days start with specks of dust high in the atmosphere. As they fall, water droplets attach to them, forming snowflakes. Ski areas like Bromley replicate this natural process using miles of pipes that feed water and compressed air to hundreds, sometimes thousands, of snow guns scattered across a mountain.

Early guns mixed compressed air and water inside a chamber, and then used air pressure to propel water droplets skyward through a large nozzle. This was the type of system Fred Pabst Jr., of beer family fame, spent $1 million installing in 1965, making his resort one of America’s earliest adopters.

“It was a black art. We knew nothing,” says Slavko Stanchak, whose inventions and expertise have made him a legend among snowmakers. It was an era when energy was relatively cheap and resorts would rent rows of diesel-powered compressors that threw whatever snow they could generate on the hill. But as energy costs rose in the 1990s and early 2000s, so did the impetus to innovate.

“We focused on making the process viable from a business standpoint,” Stanchak says.

He eventually launched a consulting company that helped ski areas, including Bromley, design or improve their snowmaking operations. On the water side of the equation, Bromley spent the 1990s improving its piping network and added a mid-mountain pump to help get H2O from its ponds to its trails. (Much of the water eventually returns to the watershed during the spring melt.) But the amount of water needed to carpet a ski hill in snow remains relatively fixed from year to year, so there are only so many efficiency gains to be had. Compressing air is what really eats into a budget.

“The air is where the little dollar bills fly out,” says Cairns, adding that two diesel compressors can consume a tanker truck of fuel every week.

The 1990s also saw more efficient snow guns come to market. Tinkerers discovered that devices with multiple small holes, instead of a single large aperture, could utilize water, rather than air pressure, to force fluid upward. This allowed them to move the compressed air nozzles to the outside of the barrel, where they would primarily break the water stream into droplets — a far less strenuous function than forcing them out of the gun.

“An old-school hog might use 800 cubic feet per minute [of compressed air]. This one here uses about 70,” Folts says, pointing toward a tower gun from the early 2000s that stands about 15 feet tall and, unlike the ground guns on Blue Ribbon, can’t be easily moved. Up the hill sits a newer model that can get by on closer to 40 cubic feet per minute, or CFM, and a bit farther down the slope is the resort’s latest tool, which under ideal conditions can use as little as 10. That’s a roughly hundred-fold increase in efficiency.

The state-backed Efficiency Vermont program urges resorts to swap in as many of the more efficient devices as possible. “That work got a real big boost in 2014, when we did the ‘Great Snow Gun Roundup,’” explains Chuck Clerici, a senior account manager at the organization. Before then, it had been doing a handful of sporadic replacements. The roundup retired some 10,000 inefficient models statewide, and, overall, Clerici says snowmaking operations are now using about 80 percent less air than they used to.

Bill Cairns, the president and general manager of Bromley Mountain Ski Resort, with a map of the resort and its snowmaking system.

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Grist

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While Efficiency Vermont doesn’t separate savings that are the result of snowmaking upgrades from, say, those tied to building improvements, it reports that its efforts to help ski resorts use less energy have saved more than a billion kilowatt hours of electricity between 2000 and 2022. That’s nearly a million tons of planet-warming carbon dioxide emissions or the equivalent of taking more than two gas-fired power plants offline for a year.

“The bigger projects we’ve had over the years have been snowmaking projects,” says Clerici. “We don’t have that many instances in the energy-efficiency realm where you can swap something that uses one-fifth of the energy.”

Standing next to the building that houses Bromley’s air compressors, Cairns points to a concrete slab with two manhole covers that once fed massive underground diesel tanks. “Underneath was fuel,” he says. To his right is a large pipe marked where the carbon-spewing generators used to connect to the rest of the snowmaking system. Now it’s cut off.

One snow gun at a time

Bromley is among the many snowmakers that have been able to eliminate, or drastically reduce, its dependence on diesel air compressors. Electrifying the job has also allowed some resorts to incorporate renewable energy. Bolton Valley, in Vermont, features a 121-foot-tall wind turbine. Solar panels now dot the hills of many others, including Bromley, which leases a strip of land beside its parking lot for a solar farm. The array produces more than half the power its snowmaking system consumes.

America’s snowmaking industry has been historically based on the East Coast, where natural snow can be especially elusive. But that’s changing. “We’re doing a lot more work out West,” says Ken Mack, who works for HDK Snowmakers, one of the largest equipment manufacturers. One of the company’s executives recently moved to Colorado to help meet demand.

The snow guns that HDK sells currently may be reaching the limit of how little water and compressed air they use. “We’re probably getting to a point where we’ve gone as low as we can go,” says Mack. That’s required finding gains in other arenas.

One step snowmakers can take, says Mack, is to better track how much energy they use, ideally in real time. He’s in the midst of trying to help revive a metric called the Snowmaking Efficiency Index, or SEI. It’s a measure of how many kilowatt hours it takes to put 1,000 gallons of water worth of snow on the hill, something Stanchek pioneered years ago but never quite took hold. (For reference, under ideal circumstances it takes about 160,00 gallons to cover one acre in one foot of snow.)

If publicly released, such data could provide transparency and allow ski areas to boast about their efficiency. That’s particularly appealing given that sustainability and environmental stewardship are increasingly top of mind for consumers. But because SEI varies considerably from mountain to mountain, and by temperature, it will likely be most effective as a tool for resorts to compete against themselves, rather than each other.

This year, Bromley’s SEI ranged from about 23 in the warm, early weeks of the season to mid-teens when temperatures dropped. Cairns consistently tries to beat those numbers and can monitor them from his office. If the number ever spikes, he can search for an open gun, leaking water line, or other culprit.

“Anything below 20 is really good,” Cairns says. “So we’re trending the right way.”

An arguably more revolutionary development in snowmaking is the move toward automated systems that can be operated almost entirely remotely. One obvious benefit is reducing the need to find people willing to schlep around a mountain in the dead of night, when temperatures can dip into single digits. More importantly, automation allows resorts to ramp snowmaking up and down quickly, which is particularly useful as global temperatures climb.

Snowmaking can occur when the mercury drops to about 28 degrees F (though the process is optimal at around 22 degrees or less); a threshold Mother Nature sometimes crosses for only brief periods. When it does, resorts can take advantage with a press of a button, instead of having to spend the time dispatching a crew out to fire up all those guns. The ability to operate in shorter time windows also means less energy is needed to run pumps and compressors — and get people up and down the mountain.

“You’re done sooner,” says Mack. Where it might take 100 man-hours to cover a trail, automation could cut that to 20 or 30. “It’s absolutely a savings. But it also gives you a little bit of reserve if you need it.”

Europe is far ahead of North America when it comes to automation, in part because governments have subsidized the daunting expense of running electricity and communication lines across a mountain. The cost of installing the technology can quickly run into the millions and, without subsidies, the benefits for American ski areas have been limited largely to smaller mountains in warmer climates, such as in the mid-Atlantic, where it is vital to surviving. But bigger resorts in snowier locales, including Stowe, Stratton, and Sugarbush in Vermont and Big Sky in Montana, have been testing the equipment.

“The future of snowmaking is definitely going to be automation,” says Cairns. “It’s just a lot of money, and nobody really wants to subsidize that yet.”

Bromley is testing one semi-automated gun that could avoid the wiring issue. It uses the existing compressed air supply to spin an internal turbine that creates just enough energy to run a small onboard computer. By monitoring the weather conditions, it can automatically adjust the rate of water and air flow to produce optimal snow.

“Those guns don’t need any power,” says Folts, as he finished adjusting the position of one gun and moved to the next. “That’s kind of another next level.”

Until then, Folts and his crew lumber on into the night, one gun at a time.

Take accountability and move forward.

Those were the two points Los Angeles Fire Chief Jaime Moore hit repeatedly when speaking with LAist’s Larry Mantle this week.

On taking accountability, Moore said hazardous conditions and decisions made before the Palisades Fire erupted a year ago meant “our firefighters never had a chance” to arrest the fire that killed 12 people and destroyed thousands of structures.

On moving forward, he emphasized that reform is already in the works.

“Things have changed since the Palisades Fire, and we're going to continue making big changes in the Los Angeles Fire Department,” said Moore, who was selected for the LAFD top job by Mayor Karen Bass in November.

Here are three takeaways from the interview, which aired on AirTalk on Tuesday.

1. Staffing decisions hampered fire response

The LAFD uses a so-called pre-deployment matrix to set firefighter staffing levels ahead of high-risk weather.

According to the department’s after-action report, however, staffing levels on the day the Palisades Fire began fell short of the LAFD standard for extreme weather conditions. The National Weather Service had warned of low humidity, high winds and dry vegetation, what it calls a “particularly dangerous situation.” It’s the highest level of alert the agency can give.

Despite the high risk, the LAFD report said the decision not to deploy more firefighters in advance was in part made to save money.

Moore said Monday that the department has updated its policies to increase staffing for especially hazardous conditions, but he said he doesn’t believe additional resources would have stopped a fire of the magnitude that leveled the Palisades.

To suppress that kind of fire, he said, the department would need to pre-deploy resources across the city’s vast geography — to places like Baldwin Hills, Franklin Canyon, the Hollywood Hills, the Palisades, Porter Ranch and Sunland-Tujunga.

Moore said the department has already made new policies to call for more resources when the Weather Service issues a “particularly dangerous situation” alert.

2. LAFD is mostly an urban firefighting department

Moore referenced a key finding of the after-action report regarding a lack of training in wildland firefighting, which contributed to confusion and struggles to effectively utilize resources during the fire.

Wildland fires pose a number of challenges that are different from what firefighters face in urban environments. Those include the need to coordinate a large number of resources over vast areas, all while dealing with fast-moving flames that can rapidly tear through dry plants and structures.

The department found in its report that fewer firefighters were trained in fighting these wildland fires in recent years and that “leaders struggled to comprehend their roles.”

Some leaders in the department had “limited or no experience in managing an incident of such complexity,” the report said. And some reverted to doing the work of lower positions, leaving high-level decision-making positions unfilled.

“What we're doing now is really furthering that training and reinforcing that education with our firefighters so that they could be better prepared,” Moore said on AirTalk.

3. Changes to the after-action report

Early versions of the after-action report differed from the version released to the public in October, a fact that was first reported by the Los Angeles Times. The Times also reported that Battalion Chief Kenneth Cook, who wrote the report, wouldn’t endorse the final version because of the changes.

Moore acknowledged to the L.A. Board of Fire Commissioners at a Jan. 6 meeting that the report had been watered down.

“It is now clear that multiple drafts were edited to soften language and reduce explicit criticism of department leadership in that final report,” Moore told the commissioners. “This editing occurred prior to my appointment as fire chief, and I can assure you that nothing of this sort will ever again happen while I am fire chief."

Some changes were small but telling. A section titled “Failures” later became “Primary Challenges.”

Moore told LAist that changes between versions “ made it easier for the public to understand,” but an LAist review found the edits weren’t all surface-level.

In the first version of the report, the department said the decision not to fully pre-deploy all available resources for the particularly dangerous wind event “did not align” with their guidelines for such extreme weather cases. The final version said that the initial response “lacked the appropriate resources,” removing the reference to department standards.

The department also removed some findings that had to do with communications.

One sentence from the initial version of the report said: “Most companies lacked a basic briefing, leader’s intent, communications plan, or updated fire information for more than 36 hours.” That language was removed from the final report.

LAist has asked the Fire Department for clarification about why these assertions were removed but did not receive a response before time of publication.

Olympic organizers announced Tuesday that registration to buy tickets will run through March 18, with sales beginning in April. LA28 CEO Reynold Hoover said that locals will get the first bite at the apple.

The registration period opens 7 a.m. Wednesday.

" Our host city communities here in Los Angeles and Oklahoma City will have the opportunity to be a part of a local presale," Hoover said outside the Coliseum while surrounded by Olympic athletes from Games past. "With our thanks and as part of our commitment to making sure that those who live and work around the games, where the games will take place, can be in the stands and cheer in 2028."

Olympic organizers also provided more details on ticket prices for the first time. One million tickets will sell for $28 a pop and around a third of tickets will be under $100, according to LA28 Chair Casey Wasserman.

That means the majority of tickets to the Olympic Games will run into triple digits. If the World Cup is any indication, some tickets could get astronomically pricey.

Interested fans can go to LA28.org to register. Those who are selected will get an email with a time slot to purchase tickets.

The L.A. County Board of Supervisors took a step toward banning ICE from unlawfully operating on county-owned property and to post signage designating those spaces as “ICE Free Zones.”

The board unanimously approved the motion at Tuesday’s meeting, directing staff to draft the policy.

The draft could include requirements for county employees to report to their supervisor if they see unauthorized immigration activity on county property.

The city of Los Angeles passed a similar order last July, which strengthened protocols that prohibit ICE from operating on city-owned property. The agenda staff report points to an “ICE Free Zone” ordinance passed by the city of Chicago in October.

Supervisors Lindsey Horvath and Hilda Solis co-authored the motion.

Horvath said the county will not allow its property to be used as “a staging ground for violence caused by the Trump administration."

Solis added that their action as a board could have a ripple effect on other city councils and local governments.

“Even though it's taken us this long to get here …I think it's really important for our communities to understand what we're saying is you don't have the right to come in and harass people without a federal warrant,” Solis said. “And if you use our property to stage, then you need to show us documentation as to why.

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli said in an X post that the county cannot exclude federal agents from public spaces.

"Anyone who attempts to impede our agents will be arrested and charged, including county employees," Essayli said in the post. "We have already charged more than 100 individuals for similar conduct."

Since June, ICE raids have ramped up across the nation, heavily targeting certain immigrant communities like those in Los Angeles.

The motion directs the draft to include language that prohibits all types of ICE operations on county land, including staging and mobilizing without a warrant.

The motion cites an incident on Oct. 8, when county officials say federal agents raided the Deane Dana Friendship Park and Nature Center in San Pedro, arresting three people and threatening to arrest staff.

The motion also requires that the county post 'Ice Free Zone' signage on all of its properties.

Sergio Perez, executive director of the Center of Human Rights and Constitutional Law, told LAist the policy is enforceable under Fourth Amendment case law.

“You have to make sure that when you post that signage … that means that you routinely, or semi-routinely, assess who's coming in to the property, so that you can control access,” Perez said. “But if ICE shows up with a warrant, with a subpoena, then all bets are off, and they can enter into the property and do what they need to do.”

Perez said the county has moved “incredibly” slow on this issue.

“It's embarrassing that the county is moving six months later, given how we've been facing violent, aggressive, invasive and illegal raids now for so long here in Southern California,” Perez said, adding that local governments have not been fast or creative enough in protecting immigrant and refugee communities.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights, one of the region’s largest immigrant advocacy groups, supports the motion.

"We do not want our county resources being used for federal immigration enforcement activities, which disrupt, uproot, and terrorize our communities,” Jeannette Zanipatin, policy director for CHIRLA, said in a statement. “It is important for all public spaces to be really safe for all residents.”

County staff have 30 days to draft a plan to implement the new policy.