Snow guns blow a mist of snow over skiers as they make their way down Hayburner trail on opening day at Sugarloaf in 2022. Gregory Rec/Portland Press Herald

The ability to make snow has Maine’s ski areas optimistic about the winter season and confident they can bounce back from the heavy rain and warm temperatures predicted for later this week.

Many of Maine’s ski resorts are capable of making their own snow when Mother Nature fails to provide, Ski Maine Executive Director Dirk Gouwens said.

“Truthfully, we really don’t need a lot of natural snow. It’s really more to make people feel like it’s really winter,” Gouwens said in a phone call Monday evening. “We do need cold weather, obviously, in order to make (snow).”

They might need to, according to the National Weather Service’s Climate Prediction Center, which says this winter could bring warmer-than-average temperatures and a limited amount of snow – though overall precipitation could be near-normal.

Some slopes have already opened and are reporting strong numbers for the early season and relatively high sales of season passes, Gouwens said. He said ski areas set a statewide attendance record two years ago, and last year’s numbers were slightly lower but still “well over our 10-year average.”

He said snowmaking machines are among the most significant expenses at most Maine mountains, but improvements in the technology have lowered energy needs and costs in the past 25 years. Meanwhile, pandemic-driven surges in attendance, as well as the availability of energy-minded grants, has enabled many of Maine’s peaks to install new and more efficient equipment in the last few years, he said.

Natural snow, however, can serve as a powerful marketing tool, especially when enticing out-of-state tourists to Maine, he said.

“If it doesn’t seem like winter, people don’t travel,” Gouwens said. “If you’re from Boston, for instance, and it’s green grass in your backyard, you might not think that it’s snowy on the mountains.”

But not every mountain has the luxury of artificial snow.

Chris Kilcollins, operations manager at the Quoggy Jo Ski Center in Presque Isle, which relies solely on natural snowfall, said his crew was “optimistically pessimistic” about the winter forecast.

“We’re hoping for a really good winter. We’re off to a pretty good start,” Kilcollins said on a phone call Monday evening. “As long as we don’t lose it all in the rainstorm.”

Rain is expected to fall over much of Maine later this week, and forecasters say it could melt away parts of the snowpack.

Workers at Quoggy Jo plan to shovel snow from open areas into larger piles Monday night and Tuesday morning, in hopes of insulating most of it from the rain, Kilcollins said. Once the rain passes, they will spread what they can back onto the slopes.

Quoggy Jo usually budgets for about 12 weeks of skiing each year, he said. Last season, they barely got half that, leaving a roughly $30,000 deficit operators hope to make up for this season, he said.

“It’s a nightmare, honestly, not having consistent snow,” Gouwens said.