Overview
- Heavy snowfall has blanketed key venues from Bormio to the Antholz valley less than two weeks before the 6 February opening, with more forecast, Italian meteorologist Mattia Gussoni said.
- Despite fresh snow, the organising committee plans 2.4 million cubic metres of artificial snow using 948,000 cubic metres of water, with equipment kept ready as required by skiing and biathlon bodies.
- Livigno has already produced more than 600,000 cubic metres of snow since mid-December for freestyle and snowboard events, accelerating output during brief sub-zero spells.
- Snowmaking typically requires wet-bulb temperatures near minus 2 to minus 2.5 Celsius, and technology now delivers about 25% more snow with similar power while cutting priority-slope prep times to roughly 50 hours.
- Long-term Alpine snow cover has fallen by about half over the past century, narrowing cold windows for production and increasing operational pressure, though planned water use is far below Beijing 2022 levels.