• Winter's first real foray into the Plains this year is bringing temperatures that can feel like a fist in the face, but not everyone sweats the cold -- or the snow that comes with it. Here are a few of their stories:
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• Far up Minnesota's North Shore of Lake Superior, the bitter cold is nicely timed at Lutsen Mountains, the largest ski resort in the Midwest. Crews plan to take advantage of it to run the snowmaking machines 24/7 for the next 10 days, said Jim Vick, Lutsen's marketing manager. The resort has invested $3 million in snowmaking technology over the past five years, and it's going to get a workout. Snow is easier to make when it's cold, and won't melt, of course.
• With 94 runs on four interconnected mountains covering 1,000 acres and 820 vertical feet, Lutsen needs plenty of snow. It got a blanket of close to 2 feet of natural snow in this week's storm.
• That snow is generating a lot of enthusiasm but it's not enough, Vick said, because 10 inches of natural snow packs down to only about an inch worth of base on main runs.
• "This helps but it doesn't get us all the way there. So we will continue to make snow on our primary runs. The weather being cold coming forward is ideal for that," Vick said, explaining that snowmaking machines operate most efficiently between zero and 10 degrees.
• Lutsen, which is about a 240-mile drive from Minneapolis and 90 miles from Duluth, currently opens only on weekends, but Vick said he expects to have excellent conditions this coming weekend with 22 to 25 runs open -- including a couple runs that are about a mile long -- and more than 50 runs open when it starts daily operations the weekend of Dec. 14.

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