What the synthetic snow lacked in aesthetics (these are formed by naturally occurring atmospheric water vapor, whereas water shot from snow cannons freezes into small balls), it made up for in dependability. Some skiers like synthetic snow because it melts slower and packs similarly to real snow.
Due to uncooperative weather, snow cannons have been blasting out ever-increasing amounts of synthetic snow in recent years. As the host city in 2010, Vancouver transformed 7960 cubic meters (2.1 million gallons, pdf) of water into snow. In 2014, eighty percent of the snow in Sochi was false; four years later, in PyeongChang, South Korea, it was ninety percent. This year's Winter Olympics will be the first to be held on artificial snow, on the slopes outside of Beijing.
According to China's offer, it would take 49 million gallons of water to cover the Olympic slopes with snow. However, according to a geographer contacted by Bloomberg, the country might divert up to 2 million cubic meters (528 million gallons) of water to snow-making, further straining one of the country's most water-stressed regions.
In mid-November, the alpine ski facility, one of three sites for the games, began creating the requisite 1.2 million cubic meters of snow. A cubic meter of snow might take half a cubic meter of water to create.
In its 2015 assessment (pdf) analyzing China's candidacy for the games, the International Olympic Committee stated that Beijing had "underestimated the amount of water that would be required for snowmaking for the Games" and "overestimated the ability to reclaim water used for snowmaking."
