On an 80-degree Friday afternoon in July, at a factory just outside Buffalo, it was snowing.
But this was not your run-of-the-mill frozen water vapor.
This snow started as a 400-pound roll of plastic film, which was fed into a steel drum lined with blades that thrashed the material into particles the size of popcorn kernels. The shredded bits then drifted down a turquoise chute into a cardboard box, forming a soft white mound of what looked like freshly fallen snow.
The process was handled by workers in the Flakes Department, one of several teams at the factory in Depew, where the holiday decoration brand Buffalo Snow has been manufacturing blizzards annually since the 1980s.
Natural snow, an indelible part of wintertime scenery, has in many places been in short supply lately because of rising temperatures. When Old Man Winter fails, Buffalo Snow, one of the few companies manufacturing fake snow in the United States, can help conjure a wintry atmosphere with a 24-ounce bag of downy snow (about $6), or a sparkling white Christmas tree skirt (about $3).
Buffalo Snow’s artificial snow is made from plastic materials contorted to various degrees of softness and sparkle. Its products can be found on shelves at Walmart and Michael’s stores, at malls’ North Pole setups, in department stores’ holiday windows and on movie sets: According to The Buffalo News, the snow was used in “Home Alone.”