softbootsurfer Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 Having lived here in western Colorado, for over 50 years now, at an elevation of 8,000ft. I can say with certainty that something is amiss... we have lost trees by the millions due to Beetle infestation, we have Warmer temperatures, that are above freezing for most of the year...we have Rain in January at 12,000ft. at Midnight, we have rains on all the mountains during spring skiing, we have very few days now of perfect Colorado groom due to Freeze thaw cycles, icing up the slopes, this is combined with the Grooming equipment evolving into High Speed super thin Ice layers now I am curious if Others on this Forum have noticed and would share their thoughts on what is happening in their Areas... Thank You... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big mario Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 Lovey used to average about 400” a year. Now it’s a struggle to get to 300”, I think they got 273” last year. It seems that there are less true pow days(12+”) now than ever, I picked up my 200 tanker in ‘19, and I have less than 5 pow days on it in over 120 possible riding days $hit aint right mario Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lordmetroland Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 I’m sure the folks at BP would beg to differ. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
st_lupo Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 I don't think think this is too surprising for anybody involved in snow sports or even summer sports for that matter. When I first moved to Kongberg we were having winters with -30C weather, now we are pretty lucky to go under -10C. It has been a loooooong time since natural snow was enough for the local bump and now the local dams are getting really low so running the snow cannons is going to be a more challenging prospect (we have had more rain than usual this year though which will help). During the summer months, it is extremely obvious that a lot of the usual creeks and swamps have really dried up. It IS awesome for mountain biking but extremely worrying for the planet! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunSurfer Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 Thaw/freeze cycles in peak season have been a routine part of NZ snow sports for 20 years. We have just had a major ski field essentially go bankrupt for lack of snow. This is despite it being a significant tourist drawcard and focus for local small businesses and receiving significant financial loan support from our national government (federal equivalent). Global heating is deniable only by the intellectually dishonest. My response to this is political, and personal. Look at the images provided by the Hubble and James Webb telescopes. The space even just in our galaxy around us is incredibly hostile to human life. There is no Planet B available to us. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 My local hill is now closed. Not enough water in the creek they used to make snow. And it's too warm to make snow much before December. We have short and fierce winters and summers with very long fall and spring seasons with highly variable weather. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Neil Gendzwill Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 How on earth do you call our winters "short", Corey? Around these parts snow settles in for the winter as early as Hallowe'en and usually by mid-November and we don't get the real thaw until late March, sometimes into April. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lordmetroland Posted October 20, 2022 Report Share Posted October 20, 2022 4 hours ago, SunSurfer said: There is no Planet B available to us. Evidently, according to billionaires from my country, Planet B is your country. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Corey Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 4 hours ago, Neil Gendzwill said: How on earth do you call our winters "short", Corey? My snowboarding season is about 3 months. That's short! (I don't count the white ribbon of death of opening weeks as 'open') We don't usually have snow stay around until mid-November. We're a little further South and lower altitude than you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SunSurfer Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 2 hours ago, lordmetroland said: Evidently, according to billionaires from my country, Planet B is your country. Not just billionaires though Peter Theil is the most politically hypocritical one our government has let in (extreme right wing advocate essentially bought a bolt hole residency in what he would probably describe as a socialist society). Amongst our friends are an American couple who have recently gained NZ residency. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softbootsurfer Posted October 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 Here is another SIGN... https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/16/us/alaska-snow-crab-harvest-canceled-climate Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kneel Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 11 hours ago, softbootsurfer said: Here is another SIGN... https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/16/us/alaska-snow-crab-harvest-canceled-climate That's gonna be a hard sell for me to believe climate change is responsible for the decline of ANY commercialy harvested food souce from our oceans. Aside from energy, name one other industry the takes a resource WITHOUT cultivating or returning something BACK to sustain and perpetuate that resource. We've been raping the worlds oceans for a hunrded years. No amount of agenda based climate-splaining changes that fact. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
softbootsurfer Posted October 21, 2022 Author Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 I am aware of Commercial fishing practices...this article was referring to the impact on new spawns of Snow crabs and a general die off by Billions due to rising sea water temperatures, at least I thought that was what I read? anyway we will know soon enough...guessing you haven't noticed any changes in your local ski areas over the last 15 years? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kneel Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 I live in New Jersey. The weather as related to our local bump is the reason I spend more winter time in VT and CO. But, yes, on my present 52 year stint on this marble I have noticed some changes in the local weather. Hurricanes and blizzards in late October. 2 week stretches of 50 degree temps in January and February. I don't recall that when I was younger. I do remember a LOT more snow with (then) Vernon and Pocono resorts opening the first week of December and closing the first week of April. Now the week before Christmas seems to be the norm followed by closed mid March. Looking back historically, however snowfall amounts are on the rise contradicting what my perception was. Perhaps warmer than avg temps and rain AFTER appreciable snowfall are the catalyst of diminishing snow pack? Souther VT where I ride seems to have more of the dreaded 50 degree and freezing rain days, when in the past it was just 40 and freezing rain. Looking at the data by decade, snowfall totals are on the rise and well above average here and in New England. No doubt the west presently has a water problem. Is that climate change or population change? I dunno, dude. The big picture is so complex. I think there is so much more data out there to collect and our arrogance gets in the way in thinking we know exactly what to do to change it's course, IF we can change it's course. We just changed the orbit of a meteor so there is hope...unless of course that direction doesn't affect some other cataclysmic event. And full disclosure, me and several of my friends have spent countless hours aboard local commercial fishing fleets collecting data for NOAA/NMFC and NJMFC throughout different fishing seasons. I can assure you, what you are aware of is nothing compared to what actually goes on that DOESN'T get reported. It's ****ed. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wolf Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 Ohio has always been in a marginal latitude for snow sports and it does seem to be getting worse. Our little ski areas struggle to open for the lucrative Christmas vacation week and the number of good snowmaking days in January and February also seem to be declining. The little place I go to added a cooling tower for their well water to air-cool the water before being pumped up the hill. They say it improves the snowmaking yield, especially when it's barely cold enough to make snow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lordmetroland Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 7 hours ago, Kneel said: Aside from energy, name one other industry the takes a resource WITHOUT cultivating or returning something BACK to sustain and perpetuate that resource. Ah, well, factory farming is pretty hard on things (James Rebank’s English Pastoral is a great book). Mining is a bit brutish. Giant loafs of salty meat are maybe not totally sustainable… 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big mario Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 53 minutes ago, lordmetroland said: Giant loafs of salty meat are maybe not totally sustainable… A pox on your house blasphemer... 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kneel Posted October 21, 2022 Report Share Posted October 21, 2022 1 hour ago, lordmetroland said: Ah, well, factory farming is pretty hard on things (James Rebank’s English Pastoral is a great book). Mining is a bit brutish. Giant loafs of salty meat are maybe not totally sustainable… My wife just smuggled 2 loaves, that's 12 lbs of nitratey goodness, to PbVille for our son. I told her she needed to hide them under her shirt like Brad Davis in Midnight Express, but figured she'd end up looking like that Canadian woodshop teacher with those enormous prosthetic breasts... 1 hour ago, big mario said: A pox on your house blasphemer... December you'll get your fix. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jarcode Posted October 22, 2022 Report Share Posted October 22, 2022 (edited) Climate change and global average temperature increases also bring some unusual weather patterns to the northern half of this continent, where the projections aren't simply "less snow" (recalling the Newfoundland snowstorm in 2020). Warming also brings higher total moisture content in the planet's atmosphere and leads to more intense and frequent precipitation, meaning mountains that already rest well below freezing for most of the ski season may be seeing more snow. Furthermore, arctic outflow events could be more frequent in our future due to the human impact on the planet's climate, which also complicates the picture and contributes to more extreme weather, rather than simply "warmer". The mountains that are really suffering from climate change are in regions where a couple degrees of warming means the difference between a brutally wet winter and an incredibly snowy one. The future for resorts that aren't already dealing with brutal freeze/thaw cycles is completely different. Of course, volatility is the big unknown for a lot of North America, as we're not entirely sure what long term impacts climate change has on certain weather systems. Increased precipitation doesn't mean much for us if none of it ends up hitting our favorite ski resorts. It's not all doom and gloom for everyone, we just might have to move to where the snow ends up instead. Edited October 22, 2022 by Jarcode Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
big mario Posted October 22, 2022 Report Share Posted October 22, 2022 (edited) 3 hours ago, Kneel said: December you'll get your fix. Apologies to happy bob for the partial thread derailment, this is a serious topic worthy of a solid discussion without too much anger and passion, we are a small community here, but we are talking about porkroll here. This is serious $hit. mario Edited October 22, 2022 by big mario 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FriendlyDropBear Posted October 23, 2022 Report Share Posted October 23, 2022 (edited) Situation is far more confusing in Australia... these last few years have actually been an improvement over the decade between 05-15; some of the lowest years on record are back in the 80s The ozone hole was a serious issue over AU/NZ and now that the hole is pretty much gone it actually feels like things are cooling down a touch? I'll admit though that I'm not entirely convinced that climate change is a purely human generated issue (though I wouldn't deny our influence, having firsthand experience of what it feels like living under that hole.) Here's a pretty good chart to look at for the NSW snowies. Edited October 23, 2022 by FriendlyDropBear Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Aracan Posted October 24, 2022 Report Share Posted October 24, 2022 It is definitely happening. Glaciers are disappearing fast, the first glacier resorts have ceased operations here (probably for good). Where I grew up, there wasn't a single Xmas without snow at least until the mid-90s, and I remember winters with 6'+ snow in my parents' backyard (at an elevation of 2,600 ft). Now it's a coin toss between white and green on the 24th. We are also having an extremely warm autumn. We used to buy season passes at a discount in November. This year I doubt we would get our money's worth. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weather_nerd Posted October 25, 2022 Report Share Posted October 25, 2022 (edited) One of our local hills in Northern Arizona is now closed - Elk Ridge in Williams, AZ. There is hope that it could reopen (Mountain Capital Partners now have a permit with the forest service), but it would definitely require snowmaking. I think this is going to be true across the world... climate change is expected to increase the variability of temperature and precipitation extremes. So, while we can generally expect cold, snowy winters to continue happening (at least in the near future), we can also expect very warm/dry winters to occur as well. At my home mountain of Arizona Snowbowl, snowmaking has become a lifeline. It is extremely controversial because the Navajo, Hopi, and other indigenous tribes in the area consider our peaks sacred and they consider snowmaking to disrupt the natural environment (and I feel guilty about participating in that). But, without snowmaking, we would only be able to open a few weeks a year if we're lucky. Now that snowmaking is installed, we have been open November to May for a few years in a row. We are open later that most Colorado and Utah resorts that don't have snowmaking, despite the fact that we have about half of the natural snowfall as the SLC resorts. FWIW, I am a climate scientist and I'm pretty pessimistic about our future. My work/research is in greenhouse gas emissions from cities, and the reality is that things are bad and they aren't improving fast enough to avoid some pretty catastrophic stuff. As a snowboarder I definitely worry about the future of our sport, but that is a drop in the bucket compared to the impacts that are already being felt in the developing world. E.g., Bangladesh has ~20 million people that live only a few feet above sea level, who will inevitably be displaced as sea levels rise and even "minor" flooding has a major impact. It's going to be a bumpy ride. Edited October 25, 2022 by weather_nerd Wording 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bumpyride Posted October 26, 2022 Report Share Posted October 26, 2022 20 hours ago, weather_nerd said: It's going to be a bumpy ride. I resemble that remark! I'm in the Pacific Northwest, Montana, and Minnesota, and it's here already and going to get far worse even at these areas so high above sea level. I just spent 16 days in Tacoma pretty much staying inside from the AQI being in the Hazardous range for much of that time. 2 hour single track bike rides out of the question coupled with new record days above 90 degrees. My friend in Hill Country in Florida says they're seeing an influx of people moving from the Coastal Areas and Country Life is becoming Strip Mall Life. I can't imagine what it's going to be like for 190 Million to 1 Billion people who are in danger from rising Sea Levels. On a side note 2023 Prius Prime Vehicles will have an 60+ MPG of pure Battery Range and the Prius All Wheel Drive is already at 50 MPG with Gas. Do what you can! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
patmoore Posted October 27, 2022 Report Share Posted October 27, 2022 (edited) Climate change is hitting Vermont hard...... Actually Vermont ranks #1 in states to move to for the purpose of reducing impact of climate change. (the photo was taken in South Carolina) Edited October 27, 2022 by patmoore Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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