By Julien Pretot
PARIS, Jan 27 (Reuters) - Snowmaking teams are racing to create competition conditions for the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics within ever-narrower cold windows, as climate change steadily reshapes the limits of what technology can deliver.
Across Italy’s Alpine venues, organisers are relying increasingly on artificially produced snow to offset declining and less predictable natural snowfall, squeezing months of preparation into brief periods of sub-zero temperatures and leaving
ever less room for error.
For Milano Cortina, established resorts such as Livigno, Bormio, Cortina d’Ampezzo and Antholz-Anterselva have expanded infrastructure already in place for elite competition, adding reservoirs, pump stations and snow guns to meet Olympic requirements.
In Livigno alone, more than 600,000 cubic metres of snow have been produced since mid-December for freestyle and snowboard events, with production accelerated during short cold spells, said Nemanja Dogo, executive technical manager at snowmaking specialist TechnoAlpin, which has supplied systems to several Olympic and World Cup venues.
"After Christmas we had temperatures down to minus 22 degrees, which was a very good period to make snow," Dogo explained.
Snowmaking typically depends on wet-bulb temperatures of around minus 2 to minus 2.5 degrees Celsius — conditions that allow snow to form efficiently.
"The windows to get ready for the first of December are getting shorter and shorter," Dogo said.
Climate researchers say this loss of time is one of the clearest operational impacts of warming winters.
"It’s not just like the fact that you’re losing natural snow, you’re also losing the days that you need to make snow," said Caitlin Hicks Pries, an associate professor of biological sciences at Dartmouth who studies winter climate change and its ecological and recreational effects.
Europe is particularly exposed, she added.
"The farther south in Europe you are, the more likely you are to have these snow droughts."
That forces resorts to produce large volumes of snow very quickly, increasing pressure on infrastructure, staffing and energy systems during brief cold snaps.
Snowmaking technology, meanwhile, has advanced significantly in the last 20 years through automation, improved forecasting and efficiency gains.
Previously, only parts of slopes were covered with snow guns, and it could take around 150 hours to prepare a priority slope. By 2018, that had fallen to around 100 hours. Today, many resorts aim to complete priority slopes in about 50 hours, Dogo said.
"With the same power consumption as 10 to 15 years ago, we can now produce about 25% more snow," he said, adding that TechnoAlpin invests roughly 8 million euros annually in research and development.
Much of that investment has gone into software that integrates snow guns, pump stations and weather forecasts, allowing resorts to predict how much snow they can produce and to operate systems automatically to minimise waste.
Climate scientists say technological advances do not remove physical constraints, however.
"We need low freezing temperatures for snow. We need low freezing temperatures to make snow," Hicks Pries said.
Energy use remains a focus as resorts scale up snowmaking under tighter timelines.
Dogo said snowmaking systems typically operate between 250 and 300 hours per year. Fan guns use around 20 to 25 kilowatts per hour, while lance guns use 1.5 to 4 kilowatts per hour, depending on conditions.
In Austria, he said, the entire ski industry — including snowmaking, lifts and hotels — accounts for about 2% of national electricity consumption, with a smaller share in Switzerland.
Hicks Pries said snowmaking’s energy footprint must be viewed in context.
"Electricity demands for snowmaking are about 2 to 4% of a snow resort’s total carbon emissions," she said. "Transportation together is 50 to 80%."
Critics say rising energy prices and shrinking cold windows could make large-scale snowmaking increasingly costly. But Dogo said he did not expect snowmaking to become economically unsustainable anytime soon, citing continued growth in skier numbers globally.
"The key is efficiency," he said. "Producing more snow with the same power, and switching systems on when conditions are right and off immediately when they are not."
For the International Olympic Committee, the Winter Games have become a test of how far snowmaking can compensate for climate pressure.
Several studies suggest the number of cities capable of reliably hosting Winter Olympics is shrinking, raising questions about long-term viability.
Hicks Pries said snowmaking can only compensate so much, and under continued warming the risks just escalate.
"With four degrees Celsius of warming, 98% of European ski resorts are going to be threatened with low snow supply," Hicks Pries said.
"Right now, snowmaking can cover for the change that we’re seeing if they have the resources. But that can’t go on."
(Reporting by Julien Pretot; Editing by Hugh Lawson)
