Las Vegas Ski & Snowboard Resort
Draft Master Development Plan

Climate/Solar Analysis

Microclimate

While regional climate patterns are primarily concerned with evaluating total resort feasibility, a thorough understanding of microclimate provides an essential input for the site-specific design process. Microclimate is basically the climate near the ground where surface influences such as lakes, swamps, mountain slopes and valleys, and vegetation effect dramatic influence upon the local climate as experienced by humans on the earth's surface.

Most sliders are highly aware of the sun's influence on snow quality. While sliders prefer to slide in the sun, they will not do so if the snow is sticky or mushy due to intense solar radiation. As illustrated in Plate II.1, sliders will follow the sun throughout the day, sliding on eastern exposures in the morning, southern exposures at noon and western exposures in the afternoon. As a general rule, south slopes are the warmest, eastern and western slopes the next warmest and northern slopes the coolest. Snowpack retention is a critical concern for any skiing/snowboarding operation and for this reason, slopes and trails should naturally be located where the snowpack remains for the longest period.

Solar Analysis

The site's angular relationship with the sun is a critical design parameter, since it determines the time of day and for how long the sun's rays will bathe the parking lots, daylodge, slopes and base areas. Within the Las Vegas Ski and Snowboard study area, the solar radiation is particularly intense, resulting in frequent times of little or no snowpack on south facing terrain. For this reason, we have prepared a detailed solar analysis to determine the areas of topographic shading at 9:00 a.m., 12:00 noon and 3:00 p.m., on three selected days of the winter season. Figures 5a(JPG | PDF) 5b(JPG | PDF) 5c(JPG | PDF) illustrate the sun/shadow throughout the study area on these selected days, while Figure 5d(JPG | PDF) illustrates the hot and cold zones and Figure 5e(JPG | PDF) illustrates the hot and cold zones in a 3-dimensional perspective.