Snowy Sochi Olympics: 16,000,000 cubic feet of snow stored for games

There should be no worries of a snowless Winter Olympic in Russia’s Sochi, as the organizers of the event made sure to stockpile 16 million cubic feet of snow for the competitions.

Though it has been a record warm winter for Moscow, the organizers of the Sochi Olympics can guarantee that there will be enough snow for the athletes in any weather at the Black sea resort of Sochi in Russia.

There will be four different forms of technology used to ensure snowy Olympics in 2014. First of all, eight vaults have been storing snow for over a year under special blankets made from isothermal fabric to keep it from defrosting. The containers are located along the Olympic slopes of the Roza Khutor ski resort on Aibgy Mountain, which will host the event.

Second, there are hundreds of snow cannons scattered around the slopes. They use water from the mountain lakes to make artificial snow.

In addition, a special kind of snow salt is being used as a kind of glue for when and if the snow melts. And finally, mountain gutters gather snow falling at the highest peaks and transport it down to the slopes.

Of course technology is also being utilized by competitors going for gold.

“We are trying to figure out which lubricants are going to provide maximum acceleration in the Sochi snow so that later we could share our findings with the services that are to prepare the equipment for the Russian ski athletes at the Olympic Games,” skier Aleksandr Schastnykh told RT’s Thabang Motsei.
For more, watch the report by RT’s Thabang Motsei.