When winter comes, most of our country is covered with a ‘snow blanket’. Snow piles grow, falling snowflakes sparkle in the evening lights, the light plays on the ice in skating rinks. But there is a city in Russia, a huge frosty country, where there is very little snow in winter, as they say. This is a seaside city of Sochi. At the same time, the 2014 Winter Olympics was held in Sochi. Is it surprising? Our correspondent ‘found’ snowy places even in the subtropics.
Snow by the sea
As for climate, Sochi is an amazing city. Its uniqueness is explained by the unusual location of the mountain ranges near the Black Sea coast, the wind directions, as well as the paths of cyclones and anticyclones that have developed over the years. As a result, experts distinguish four types of a climate in Sochi alone. The main climate is a humid subtropical one of a Mediterranean type. In this climate area, the winter miracle happens with snow by the seaside, and palm trees covered with fluffy snowflakes. Sochi’s chronicles confirm this!
In the winter of 1903, an amazingly huge amount of snow was in Sochi. There was so much of snow that the houses were ‘buried up’ in snow up to their roofs. Just shortly before this, a miracle of technology appeared in the city - the first camera. Entrepreneur Ivan Sutkovoy took a very rare photo on Plastunskaya Street in Sochi. The event was extraordinary, and Moscow publisher Alexander Gorozhankin bought the original film negative from a photo-enthusiast and published an unusual postcard showing the city of Sochi ‘buried’ in snow! Such postcards immediately were distributed all over the country. Later on, a snowy winter was in 1912. This was reported by the newspaper Chernomorsky Krai (Black Sea Region), the New Year eve’s edition of the newspaper has been preserved in the city archive. There was so much snow on the Black Sea coast that “…It took a certain Mr. N. more than two days to travel from Sochi to Gagra.” As you can imagine, he had no time to enjoy the winter beauty, his feet almost froze. The winter of 1942 was also snowy. At the time, everyone in Russia were sure it was the ‘Help from Heaven’. Units of the fascist ‘Edelweiss’ division (German: 1.Gebirgs-Division, the division’s emblem was an edelweiss flower on a green background, so its nickname was ‘Edelweiss division’ - ed.) rushed to the city through the passes of the Main Caucasian Ridge. It was very difficult to do this in the snow! In the winter of 1961, the whole country was worried about the fate of a palm collection in the Sochi Arboretum known as the Dendrary Park. It was extremely cold on the Black Sea coast by southern standards - down to 12 degrees Celsius below zero. The survival of the heat-loving plants was under threat, the Arboretum’s employees covered the palms with special burlap covers, made bonfires, and were ‘on duty’ at nights, shaking the snow off the evergreen palms’ branches. They saved the palm trees! The Sochi biologists performed a feat. Many Sochi residents remember the New Year’s days of 1997 with horror. There was so much snow that the electric wires broke. The city blacked out and was without water, heat, and telephone service for almost a week, until it got warmer and the snow melted.
Where does the snow by the sea come from? The secret is simple. It turns out that every winter, powerful arctic anticyclones float over our heads one after another, starting their way near Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the North and ending it in the Balkans. When such an anticyclone moves a little to the west, there is no snow on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus, but when it moves a little to the east, it covers the entire city of Sochi. Such deviations in the path of anticyclone to the east occur on average once every ten years.
The ‘snowiest’ place
It is also surprising that the ‘snowiest’ place in Russia is not in the Urals or Siberia, but in ... Sochi. The ‘pole of snowiness and humidity of the Caucasus’ is just 15 kilometers away from the village of Krasnaya Polyana, in the area of the former Achishkho weather station receiving up to eight meters of snow. The winter of 1975-1976 was a record one with the maximum thickness of a snow cover in the mountain village of Estosadok exceeding 350 centimeters. A local villager installed a wooden pole to measure the thickness of a snow cover, and the maximum mark on it was at 450 centimeters. In the entire village, only the tops of the houses’ roofs were seen from under the snow. Again, it is worth mentioning the ‘four climate zones’ of Sochi. While palm trees grow on the coast, a moderately cold climate is in the mountains at altitudes from 800 to 1,800 meters; a cold highland climate is above 1,800 meters, and frost climate is near glaciers at an altitude of 2,800 meters above sea level. Thanks to such unique conditions, it was possible to hold the Winter Olympics 2014 in Sochi, and also to build the Rosa Khutor mountain resort, the largest in the country. And people, who make snow, helped the nature in this ‘project’.
Snowmaking factory
For the Winter Olympics 2014 in Sochi, a snowmaking system was created at the Rosa Khutor resort. Thanks to this system, Olympic skiing pistes were prepared where medal events were held and the largest number of sets of medals were awarded - almost a third of the ninety-eight medals. And it was not at all because there was not enough snow in the mountains of Sochi.
“In natural snow, water droplets freeze in the form of familiar openwork snowflakes, and in artificial snow they are in the form of crystals. Due to this, artificial snow is denser, it is less susceptible to external factors like sun, rain, and fog, and retains its consistency for a long time. This also helps ensure safe downhill skiing. It does not matter whether the area is in the sun or in the shade, the snow density is approximately the same, which means that a skier does not get from the ice into a ‘slushy mess’ on the skiing track. Artificial snow is used to hold such significant sporting events as the Olympic Games or World Cup stages,” explained Vyacheslav Soldatenkov, head of the snowmaking department of the Rosa Khutor resort.
Today, snow at the Rosa Khutor resort is no longer made for athletes only, but for all fans of downhill skiing and snowboarding, and about a million of them come to the resort per season. They can enjoy mountain skiing in the largest skiing area in the country that is one hundred and five kilometers of ski runs.
“It would seem that it’s simple to make snow, just water, negative temperatures, and air are required. But in reality, the snowmaking system is a complex enterprise with its own production line and end product. And, as in any production, all mechanisms should run as a ‘well-oiled machine’,” shared Vyacheslav Soldatenkov.
Making snow starts with water. At the Rosa Khutor resort, there are two special technological lakes with a total volume of 153 thousand cubic meters of water coming from a natural stream. It is so clean that does not require any additional treatment, it’s enough just to cool it. The lakes have a bubbling system through the tubes installed at the bottom to supply air. This helps reduce the water temperature and also mix the water layers. The constant movement of the lake surface prevents it from becoming covered with ice. About sixty kilometers of waterpipes have been laid underground to operate the snowmaking system at the Rosa Khutor resort. Among other things, these waterpipes are used to supply water to the cooling tower, where forced cooling occurs. After the cooling tower, water goes to the pumping stations, there are five of them at the Rosa Khutor resort. The pumps supply water high into the mountains. The capacity of each pump is up to half a megawatt, and there are fourteen pumps at one station. It turns out that the energy consumed by the pumping station is enough to provide power to a small village of three hundred houses or to turn on five thousand electric kettles. Water from pumping stations is supplied to snow cannons. There are four hundred and four snow cannons at the Rosa Khutor resort, and 22 of them are mobile - this is the largest snowmaking system in Europe. Stationary snow cannons are installed at a distance of 80 to 100 meters from each other. The locations are chosen depending on the wind rose, as well as on the area to be covered with snow. Each snow cannon is connected to a power source and a hydrant. A snow cannon has two main parts. The air-droplet mixture is fed to the first part, creating the first crystallization points. The second part contains water nozzles. As a result, the water freezes around the crystallization points to make snow. The snow cannon’s performance depends on the ambient temperature. The maximum temperature at which snow can be made is minus 2 degrees Celsius, the optimal one is minus 10 degrees Celsius. The snow cannon’s performance is up to fifty cubic meters of snow per hour. Each snow cannon has its own microcontroller and weather station. All data is collected in the control room and used to operate the device, turn it on or off, as well as to choose an operating mode. But the quality of snow is controlled manually. The simplest test is to see how high a snowflake bounces off a jacket. When a snow crystal sticks to the clothes, it means it is too wet and it’s necessary to reduce the water supply. And when a snow crystal flies high, it means it’s too dry and it’s necessary to make corrections.
“Each sports event requires its own quality of snow. For example, for slalom competitions, a very hard track is required, it is initially made ‘wet’, and then freezes, the snow in this case weighs up to seven hundred kilograms per cubic meter. This is necessary to maintain hard mountain skiing trails. For comfortable mountain skiing, softer skiing runs are required, the density of snow is about 400 to 500 kilograms per cubic meter,” noted Vyacheslav Soldatenkov.
The process of making snow is controlled from a single control room. All the information about the complex system is displayed onscreen in these rooms, including the pressure in the water pipes, the information about the operation of pumps and each of the more than four hundred snow cannons. All the commands are generated and go to the system from this room. However, people are also required to control the snowmaking process, so twenty-two specialists work today in the Rosa Khutor resort’s snowmaking department. They must know hydraulics, pneumatics, automation, relay circuits, engines, and should be able to carry out all the mechanical work. And, of course, they must be good at mountain skiing or snowboarding.
“Most often, we make snow at night when the resort’s ski slopes are closed. First, the snow base is formed, and then work begins in specific areas where the snow layer is not thick enough. Then, the piste bashers - ratracks - start working to form the slopes for skiing so that everything is ready by the morning. During the mountain skiing season, we make an average of 800 thousand cubic meters of snow,” explained Vyacheslav Soldatenkov, head of the snowmaking department of the Rosa Khutor resort.
In the morning, mountain skiers and snowboarders go to the mountain skiing slopes of the Rosa Khutor resort. And it seems to everyone that snowmaking is easy. And few people think that the winter fairy tale in Sochi is made for them by a whole snowmaking factory together with nature.