Eight years ago, in 2014, the New York Times ran an opinion piece entitled “The End of Snow?” The article projected an air of certainty, “The facts are straightforward. The planet is getting hotter.” The author predicted that, “Two-thirds of European ski resorts will be likely to close by 2100.” Or that in the Northeast US, “More than half of the 103 ski resorts may no longer be viable in 30 years because of warmer winters.”
The underlying premise is man-made global warming, now called climate change. I wrote about the ever-changing climate in my last opinion piece several weeks ago related to the recent Boulder wildfires. As any Colorado skier knows, some winters are drier, and some are snowier.
I recall, using Vail as an example, one winter when the back bowls opened Thanksgiving weekend and another year when much of the front side was still not open at Christmas. Some winters saw sparce snow in January and February, leaving skiers making turns on groomed hardpack, only to see many feet of snow in April when the mountain was about to close for the season.
Unfortunately, weather is not on our schedule, and neither is climate, which includes varying temperature and moisture levels due to forces and cycles well beyond human control, and even understanding. Solar activity, ocean currents, and global wind patterns affect daily weather and I have yet heard of any way to control these events.
You don’t have to believe me, instead ask the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. One of their working groups concluded, “The climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” In other words, climate is complex and currently beyond human understanding, and therefore prediction.
Here in Denver, we went from no snow to lots of snow in just a few weeks. In early December, the media reported that Denver had a 232 day stretch without snowfall, tying a 1887 record. A few weeks later in early January, the story changed to, “Snowiest January in Denver in 3 years.” By the end of January, the Denver Post observed, “This was our snowiest January in 8 years.” Is this noteworthy news or normal weather patterns?
In late November of last year, the Denver Post wrote, “How climate change is shrinking the Colorado ski season” due to a drier and warmer fall than average, bad news for skiers, but good news for fall golfers and hikers. This past week a new narrative conveniently emerged. A “bomb cyclone”, or what when I was a kid we called a blizzard, hit the Northeast last weekend with feet of snow.
Bloomberg News attributed the heavy snow to climate change and warming oceans. How convenient. No snow or too much snow are both due to anthropomorphic climate change, not the ever-changing climate, including temperatures and moisture levels.
So much for the end of snow, a concept that might excite Bostonians digging out from their big snowstorm. Or the “Arctic Express” of bitter cold and snow headed to Denver at the time of this writing. It’s winter. Sometimes it snows, other times it doesn’t, as it has for centuries.