Organizers of Dartmouth's annual Winter Carnival have developed contingency plans in the event that there is no snow come February.
"If there's really no snow and we have an extremely warm year, there is some talk that we would make Winter Carnival into a type of Global Warming Awareness Day," student event manager Elizabeth Teague '09 said.
However, in anticipation of a Saturday start to snow sculpture construction, artificial snow was brought to campus on Wednesday.
Winter Carnvial student supervisors partnered with Facilities, Operations and Management to locate several sources of snow in Hanover. Should no natural snow grace the Green, the Campion Ice Rink has become a favored alternative to natural snow because its Zamboni shaves large quantities of ice, shavings that can be used in the sculpture. The ice rink provided the "snow" delivered Wednesday.
Daniel Schneider '07, overseer of the snow sculpture building, estimates that the Zamboni produces six large trash cans of snow for each ice rink cleaning, totalling 40 to 50 cubic yards of snow each week.
If necessary and available, natural snow can be obtained dirt- and rock-free from Scully-Fahey Astroturf field, which is plowed weekly.
So long as the Green remains frozen, FO&M trucks may continue to dump snow on the grass. But if the Green were to defrost, the trucks would create ruts in the soil, ruling out snow deliveries.
Randy Brown, a Dartmouth special events coordinator working with the student organizers, said he believes six to eight inches of snow would eliminate the need for importing snow from the Hanover area.
"We are really at the whim of the weather right now," he said.
Hannah Dreissigacker '09, a Winter Carnival student coordinator, said she'd prefer not to use man-made snow to build the sculpture, although it has been done in the past.
"We want to try to avoid [using man-made snow] because we have pride in doing it ourselves," she said.
As a last resort, Schneider said he may scale down the size of the sculpture or create a hollow frame of non-snow material, should the weather be uncooperative.
The potential for warm weather also poses a threat to the annual polar bear swim, which was nearly cancelled last year in the face of dangerously thin ice on Occom Pond.
As a potential alternative to the polar bear swim, Amy Newcomb, assistant director of the Collis center and student activities, suggested that students might roll in the snow and then jump in a 25-person hot tub placed in the middle of the Green.
"It may not be the polar bear swim, but it still has the spirit of carnival in it," she said.
In case mother nature fails to deliver snow, student coordinators are focusing on creating new events that don't require snow.
"If we have milder winters in the future, then we will have something to fall back on," Newcomb said.
The human dog sled race that normally takes place on the Green would become a three-legged race, and the Dartmouth varsity ski team races would be moved to Vermont if there is a lack of snow.
All events organized for Winter Carnival by any college organization will be listed in the official Winter Carnival schedule, including fraternity parties and Baker Tower tours.
