The future of winter fun

Would you mountain bike at a ski hill? That may soon be the sport of choice.

Welcome to the small town of Hancock, Massachusetts which is about 45 miles outside of Albany, New York. My assignment: winter recreation and how climate change could force the ski industry to disappear in the next 50 years.

Having lived in New England for a couple of years myself it seemed unfathomable that beloved ski resorts like Wachusett, Butternut, and even Jiminy Peak, which is featured in this weeks Forecast Earth program, could effectively disappear.

But the research and scientific data point to the same concern; winters are simply not as cold as they used to be. According to a report of the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment by the end of this century winters could warm by 8 to 12 degrees in the northeast. With the rising temperatures during the winter months, more precipitation will fall as rain, and less as snow effectively cutting the winter snow season in half.

What will that mean for the dozens of ski resorts and surrounding businesses which rely on those tourism dollars? Some ski resorts will be able to manage the change, simply by making more snow. But for smaller ski hills, the ones where many families take their children to learn to ski, the increased cost of making snow may break their business.

When that happens it sets off a chain reaction, ski shops suddenly aren't selling as many skis, restaurants normally filled with skiers sipping cocoa at the end of the day are empty, condos sit unused or are put up for sale.

In New Hampshire residents and business owners were so concerned that cold, snowy winters are disappearing they launched a study www.carboncoalition.org to determine what kind of economic hit the state would take. What they discovered was during seasons where there was less snow there were 33% fewer skiers. Alpine ticket sales declined nearly $12 million dollars; snowmobile registration fees fell 30%, a loss of nearly a million dollars.

Northeast ski resorts could see the adverse affects of climate change more so than their western counterparts because of their lower elevation. Ski resorts in Colorado sit at elevations of 12,000 feet or more where in places like the Berkshires or New Hampshire the average elevation is closer to 4,000 feet.

But there's something else that seems to effect whether people go skiing that doesn't wind up in the data. I heard over and over again as I talked to people that no one thinks about going skiing when there's no snow on the ground. One man I talked to called it the "galoshes effect" -- "When a woman has to put on her galoshes she knows it's winter." Others call it "backyard syndrome" when you don't see the snow in your backyard, you don't hit the slopes.

Ironically while shooting our story it rained the first couple of days then snowed like crazy! "So much for global warming!" everyone said, and truthfully I had little come back so I asked Peter Fromhoff of the Union of Concerned Scientists --

Question: "New England has had a banner year for snow -- how does that fit into the scenario that winters are getting warmer? It certainly doesn't seem like it judging from this season."

Fromhoff: "We'll continue to have snowy days and snowy months here across this region for some time. But in the southern parts of the Northeast the precipitation will fall more as rain than snow. And that will continue to move northward. There'll be lots of variability."

Variability, the game Mother Nature likes to play with us. But variability may be what saves the Berkshires as a tourist destination. Offering a larger variety of activities year round is what residents in the region are now doing to offset the lag during the winter months. Instead of skiing the lure is hiking, canoeing, mountain biking, and camping; activities for the summer when it's warm or even in the winter...when it's warm.

Learn more about how winter recreation could be effected by climate change on Forecast Earth.

Please note, the commenting window/time has expired since this blog is a repost from January, 2008.