Ninja Question Week 7

Question
You are holding the winter Olympics at your resort next year. This year, youve had plenty of snow.
But you dont know whether youll have enough snow next year or not. Someone has suggested that
you store some of this years snow and keep it for next year. Youd have to store it outside, and cant
afford to refrigerate it. But you can probably afford to cover it in insulation, like a layer of straw, and
with a plastic sheet, to stop rain from reaching it.
Is this feasible?

Answer
Latent heat of fusion of water 334,000 J/kg
Pink batts have R~3, so straw probably has something similar. Heat flow per unit area is equal to the
temperature difference divided by R.
How much snow would you have to store? Assume a ski run is 1km long, 10m wide and at least
10cm deep thats 1000x10x0.1=1000 cubic metres of snow. And well need lots of ski runs, ski
jump tracks etc, so maybe multiply by 10 so 104 cubic metres of snow.
Lets imagine we find a gully somewhere and pile the snow into it, then cover it with insulation.
What fraction would melt over a summer?

Lets assume a gully with a square cross-section (unrealistic, I know, but good to better than a factor
of 2). If it is 10m wide and 10m deep, then you would need to fill a 100m length of it with snow to
have enough.
Assume heat leaks out mostly through the top (the ground below is probably at sub-zero
temperatures all year. So we have an area of 103 square metres. Assume a summer temperature for
the high mountains of around by day 10 C, and a summer three months long. So heat lost will be
area times temperature difference times time divided by R. Which is 103x10x3x30x12x3600/3~1010 J.
How much ice can you melt? Divide by the latent heat of fusion to get 1010/334000~3x104 kg i.e. 30
tonnes will melt.
By how much snow do you have? One cubic metre has a mass of around a tonne (density assumed
similar to that of water), so you have around 1000 tonnes, so we only lose 3% to melting. So it is
feasible.

And indeed this was done before the Sochi Olympics (they hired a swiss expert who apparently
advises on this for snow resorts all over the world).