The Snow Must Go On

It’s about 65 degrees and sunny in Canoga Park, but a hoary swirl of snow flurries is drifting past houses and body shops and nobody’s batting an eye. “They’re used to this,” says Roland Hathaway, co-owner of Snow Business Hollywood, on-call force of nature to the show-biz industry.

“It never snows when you want it to,” says co-owner John Gray, a former special effects wizard. Except here in Canoga Park, where hail, snow and avalanches are regular occurrences at the company’s industrial warehouse. Last year alone Snow Business supplied 198,000 pounds of fake fluff for movies and television. Gray and Hathaway have also done summer weddings and holiday parties and hope to expand into shopping malls soon. The men in white at Snow Business created Arctic tundra for “National Treasure,” as well as every snowflake, blizzard and icicle in “The Day After Tomorrow.” When snow failed to fall on the Canadian set of “Snow Falling on Cedars,” Snow Business shipped 33,000 pounds of white powder overnight to the set. “The FedEx bill alone cost $50,000,” says Hathaway.

With 168 different varieties made from gel, recycled paper and foam--it’s even come up with a seaweed-and-water solution that is blasted through a “snow gun” to create snowflakes--the company boasts that it has more types of snow than the Eskimos have words for. Their “paper” snow hit TV screens recently in Steven Spielberg’s “Band of Brothers,” and their latest blend, “Magic Snow,” made from a polymer powder, can be turned into snowballs, slush or snowdrifts just by adding water. Says Hathaway: “We can match anything Mother Nature throws at us.”