Emily Paine Carter

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February's cold winds were a rude surprise to my angry daffodils, lured into blooming by a deceitfully warm January.

Most folks sound eager for such cruel winter tricks to blow on out of here.

But what about the guys who built their own snowmaker? Wouldn't they be eager to hang on to cold weather?

Not so. Through the marvel of call-forwarding, I caught up with the Andy Bishop family -- enjoying a Florida beach in early March.

Andy wrote in an e-mail that he and fellow South Salemite Jason Preas built the snowmaker because they actually despise winter. The friends thought it might be a good way to pass some time, and have fun with their children, Katie Bishop, 7, and Sydney Preas, 2.

Andy said that Jason had come up with the idea, hoping that they could stage a white Christmas to delight their daughters. Andy's wife, Holly, 34, and Jason's wife, Cari, 28, liked the plan and helped the guys keep their plan a secret. What fun it would be for the children to awaken to snow on Christmas morning!

The men could bring their serious training to this fun project: Andy, 35, is a mechanical engineer for Plastics One; Jason, 29, is a design manager for East Coast Fire Protection.

They started building the device in December, using common plumbing parts and some nozzles they tracked down on the Internet. Their first, simple, test design did work, said Andy, "but we wanted to do better. The original design used water and compressed air, [which] were mixed internally and sprayed out together through a single nozzle."

Their second design proved to be much more efficient, and created greater amounts of snow, he said. They had added a pressure washer; high-pressure water and high-pressure air were mixed together after leaving the nozzle.

Andy said the "surprisingly hard" part was waiting on the cold air and low humidity necessary for good snowmaking. (Oh, I wonder, where are the bountiful snows of yesteryear?) The two men e-mailed back and forth each day, checking to see whether the other thought "tonight's the night."

Andy and Jason tried the machine out until 2 a.m. Christmas Day, but alas, it was not cold enough for it to work.

Other runs -- four or five, said Andy -- proved more successful.

Neighbors of the Bishops thought it was a great idea, he said -- and "they all said they didn't mind the noise of the pressure washer running late at night."

Will there be a "Son of Snowmaker"? Andy pledges so: The next design will address some problems with this year's model.

But, he wrote, "that will have to be a summer project because, thankfully, it isn't cold enough anymore! How's that for irony?"