Brad Riesenberg has worked in the winter sports industry for more than 20 years, and he’s never seen a winter with such paltry snowfall and mild temperatures as he has this season.
Riesenberg, who is an owner at Backcountry Snowmobiling in Park City, Utah, said customers have been canceling their tours due to a lack of snow. Snowmobiling requires a thick snowpack at lower elevations in order to be viable, Riesenberg pointed out.
“We’ve lost lots and lots of money and it’s been pretty tough,” he said. “This is up there with some of the worst [winters], if not the worst.”
Utah is in a snow drought and it’s not alone: Much of the vast, mountainous West is missing its lifeblood — fueled by record-hot temperatures so far this winter. California’s Sierra Nevada Mountains, only recently pasted with heavy snow from atmospheric river storms, are the exception.
And while this is an immediate problem for businesses and active outdoors fans, experts are also worried about bigger implications in the near future.
If the trend continues, it could deepen the West’s long drought, aggravating already contentious negotiations about allocating water along the Colorado River. It could also heighten wildfire risks and reduce water supplies in other areas well beyond the Colorado River Basin.
While there is some snow in the Colorado Rockies, many observing stations that are part of the SNOTEL snow condition monitoring network show record to near-record low levels, below anything seen since the winter of 1980-81, when some of these stations were first installed, said Russ Schumacher, Colorado’s state climatologist.
“There’s not really anywhere in Colorado that’s doing really well,” Schumacher said. Poor snowfall seasons have happened in the state before, but a “persistent ridge of high pressure” across the West has kept both cold air and snowstorms at bay, he said.
For example, Schumacher said the average temperature in Fort Collins, Colorado, during December blew away the previous record and was equal to the average temperature for the month of March. He said the warmth is dominating weather conversations in the region.
“You can’t not notice when December feels like March,” he said.
Jon Meyer, Utah’s assistant state climatologist, said the rain events seen so far this winter and lack of mountain snows in the early to mid-winter are part of larger-scale climate shifts affecting the state — changes that could affect long-term economic prospects.
Salt Lake City and the nearby ski resorts are slated to host the Winter Olympics in 2034. Salt Lake City recorded its second-latest measurable snowfall on record this year, when a tenth of an inch fell on December 27.
“I think one area of concern, specifically here in Utah, is the risk of these kinds of years increasing,” Meyer said. “We look at the potential for the Olympics coming up and wanting to have pretty good snow conditions for the 2034 Winter Olympics, and years like this highlight the risk of how climate change is impacting snowpack in Utah and across the globe.”
The more immediate risk of poor snow conditions is the impact on water supplies this summer, particularly along the Colorado River but also more broadly across a large expanse of the West.
“Everyone is going to suffer from the lack of snowpack in the Rocky Mountains because that’s how this region gets its water,” Riesenberg said.
Water supply concerns grow with each passing day since the region is so dependent on spring snow runoff for its dry season water supplies, Schumacher said. He noted the long-term trends in the Colorado River Basin, with increasing water demand from a booming population at the same time conditions are getting progressively hotter and drier over time.
Conditions could turn around in time for a thicker snowpack to yield plenty of spring runoff. But in order to do so, and reach even average snowpack conditions by March, the region would have to see a consistent period of storminess and colder temperatures, lasting on the order of weeks to months, neither of which are currently in the forecast, Schumacher noted.
“The concerns are there for sure, because you don’t want to be sitting at a record low in January, but the end state is not locked in yet,” he said. “Another dry year doesn’t bode well for the Colorado River System.”
Schumacher’s counterparts in Utah and Arizona are also warily eyeing medium-range weather forecasts for any signs of a change in the weather pattern that would signal an improvement in their water outlook as well.
Erinanne Saffell, the Arizona state climatologist, said Phoenix and Tucson had their hottest Decembers on record, and typically snowy places such as Flagstaff have also been unusually warm and dry. She acknowledged the poor start to the snow season but said there is still time to build up more snow cover. Although, like Schumacher, she noted it would take a significant weather pattern shift to avoid intensifying the region’s long-running drought.
“So we still have January, February and March to get through,” she said, noting that there has been a recent, multi-year trend toward building up a higher snowpack in March.
“We’ll just keep watching this.”
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