Qilu Evening News Qilu One Point Reporter Zhang Wei

The Winter Olympics are the temple of ice and snow sports, and ice and snow can be said to be the natural foundation of this temple. Ice projects are generally carried out in indoor venues, and the technology of artificial ice making has been relatively mature since the early 20th century. However, snow sports carried out outdoors have a very “heavenly food” feeling, and in the era of no artificial snow, the organizers of the Winter Olympics often have to worry about snow.

The third Winter Olympics were held in Lake Placid in February 1932, but the month ended up being the warmest February in the 147-year history of U.S. weather service observations. With only 10 days to go before the opening ceremony, the mountains of the Lake Placid plateau are still not covered in snow. As a last resort, people had to transport snow from very high terrain to Lake Placid on skis. In addition, containers full of snow are transported by train from the north to the town.

The 1964 Winter Olympics were held in Innsbruck, Austria, and also encountered an unusually warm temperature, whether in urban areas or mountains, as soon as the snow fell and it was difficult to accumulate. The municipality had to urgently mobilize the army, students and nearby residents to go up the mountain and carry the snow to where it was needed. In order to solve the serious snow shortage problem, the Austrian government sent troops to collect snow from the Alps and descend the mountain, using trucks to transport 20,000 ice bricks to the bobsleigh competition field, while spreading 40,000 cubic meters of snow to the alpine skiing venue, and also prepared 20,000 cubic meters of snow in case of emergency.

Lack of snow is a big problem, and more snow is not a good thing. The 1972 Winter Olympics in Nagano experienced excessive natural snowfall. In order to meet the snow quality requirements of the track, in the three months before the opening, the organizers used a lot of manpower to remove more than 20,000 cubic meters of natural snow on the track.

In 1980, Lake Placid in the United States held the Winter Olympics again, I am afraid that the first time it was held in 1932 suffered from the lack of snow, this time using artificial snowmaking technology, and since then in the Winter Olympics, artificial snowmaking has gradually become a routine operation.

Artificial snowmaking usually refers to artificially simulating the process of natural snowfall under certain meteorological conditions, spraying or spraying fine water droplets into cold air to realize the transformation from water droplets to snowflakes. In addition to helping to reduce the instability of “feeding on the sky”, artificial snow is more resistant to wind, rain and temperature changes than natural snow, and is more stable and long-lasting. This also means that artificial snow can make the snow on the track better, more stable and fairer for the athletes.

Snowmaking is usually made using “snow cannon” snow guns, which use high-pressure air to break the water flow into a fine mist, which meets the cold outside air and quickly solidifies into ice crystals before landing, turning into well-known snowflakes. The artificial snow prepared by the snow used in the Beijing Winter Olympics is divided into 9 models to meet the different requirements of different sports for snow quality. The smaller the model, the closer it is to powder snow, and the heavier the number, the wetter the snow. When the temperature is high during the day, use small snow with little water content. When the night reaches minus 20 degrees, snow No. 7 and snow No. 8 are used, so that the quality of snow is better.

The freshly created snow, although denser than natural snowfall, still does not meet the standard of racing directly on it. It takes repeated rolling by a snow groomer weighing about six tons before it gradually becomes compact and transforms into gorgeous icy snow. The term “ice-like snow” here is a term used to describe the state of snow quality on ski resorts, and the density of snowflakes is about 0.65g/m³. The surface of the ski track paved by it remains crystalline, as if there is a thin layer of “ice shell”, hardness, not easy to be destroyed, in the case of athletes turning at high speed can ensure that the surface of the ski track is not deformed, no matter how many players appear, the state of the ski track is the same relatively perfect.

This will be the first ever Olympic Games to use 100% artificial snow. Moreover, the production technology of ice snow track with different climatic conditions has been overcome by China’s technical team one by one, we have independently created an ice snow track that meets international standards, ice and snow hardness measuring instrument and ice and snow particle size measuring instrument and other ice snow track professional monitoring equipment has also been localized, the cost has been greatly compressed, providing a green and efficient model for the construction of ski tracks in the “post-Winter Olympic era”.

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