Ski resorts are struggling to open runs, walk-through ice palaces can’t be built, and the owner of a horse stable hopes that her customers will be satisfied with riding wagons instead of sleighs under majestic Rocky Mountain peaks. It’s just been too warm in the West with not enough snow.
Meanwhile, the Midwest and Northeast have been blanketed by record snow this December, a payday for skiers who usually covet conditions out West.
In the Western mountains where snow is crucial for ski tourism — not to mention water for millions of acres (hectares) of crops and the daily needs of tens of millions of people — much less snow than usual has piled up.
“Mother Nature has been dealing a really hard deck,” said Kevin Cooper, president of the Kirkwood Ski Education Foundation, a ski racing organization at Lake Tahoe on the California-Nevada line.
Only a small percentage of lifts were open and snow depths were well below average at Lake Tahoe resorts, just one example of warm weather causing well-below-average snowpack in almost all of the West.
