Thin white strips of snow scar the mostly brown slopes of Front Valley in Kosciuszko National Park. Spraying those 16–18 white strips likely consumed several megawatt-hours of electricity – in the order of 4–7 MWh – for that one Front Valley slope, as mostly fossil‑fuelled snow cannons dumped roughly a few tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere (my calculations).
This is the new “winter” in a warming climate: a fossil-powered illusion of snow, sprayed over fragile alpine ecosystems inside Kosciuszko National Park.
The long-running Three Mile Dam record shows that average peak snow depth in the Australian Alps has already fallen by around 40 centimetres since the 1950s, with shorter seasons and fewer cold days.
Three Mile Dam ridgeline chart of 70 years of declining snow depth snowdepth.info
A bare snow stake on 1 July 2026 is entirely consistent with the long-term trend rather than a one-off anomaly.
