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Cannonsburg cancels opening day

Posted at 3:09 PM, Nov 21, 2014
and last updated 2014-11-21 15:08:49-05

KENT COUNTY, Mich. - Thousands of gallons of water used to make snow at Cannonsburg could all be for nothing. The National Weather Service is calling for Freezing Rain Saturday morning with rain and snowmelt this weekend, forcing Cannonsburg to push back opening day.

Alycia Choroszucha, Media Specialist at Cannonsburg, said not opening the slopes is causing a public relations headache.

“It’s just unfortunate that we have to close because of rain, the weather was so perfect,” said Choroszucha.

Choroszucha understands they’ve been blowing snow for two weeks, saying it’s important to protect the snow they’ve invested so much in making. For now, Cannonsburg is focusing on damage control.

We caught a ride with Gevin Vandemark, a snow cat driver, to learn what they’ll be doing to soften the blow. It turns out that making even more snow is the best way to protect what’s already been made.

Plow tracks create a heavy surface area in the snow, causing the rain to soak into the depths of the tracks.

“We’ve got to prepare,” said Vandemark. “As you can see we've been flattening out everything but the way that these cat tracks are, the rain really sinks into them.”

Cannonsburg plans on blowing as much snow as they can to cover up the heavy tracks, creating less surface area. Vandemark believes this will help protect most of the snow that was made over the past two weeks.

After the rain, Choroszucha said Cannonsburg will be blowing snow Tuesday. Opening day is still unknown but employees anticipate it will be within a week’s time.