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Climate Change Means California Ski Resorts Face Uncertain Future

The ski industry, which expects higher temperatures, less snow and shorter seasons in the coming decades, is seen a bit like the canary in the coal mine of climatology.

At ski areas up and down the jagged peaks of the Sierra Nevada, where California’s drought has hit historic proportions and the broader threat of climate change hangs heavy over an industry built on optimism, the man-made snow is flying. A couple of resorts have managed to open a few runs. But beyond the occasional strip of white, the mountains remain mostly bare.

“From a business perspective, I’m a farmer,” said John Rice, general manager of Sierra-at-Tahoe, a ski area south of Lake Tahoe. Last week, he had a small pile of man-made snow, a mountain of naked runs and a hope to open in early December. “I’m not in the ski business,” Mr. Rice said. “I farm snow.”

The season is just starting, and snow may yet pile high, but the harvest in California the last three years was bleak, and the globe’s long-range forecast is grim. Fortunes are as unpredictable as ever, with bigger swings of weather variability. While snow levels have decreased drastically in the West and are generally on decline elsewhere in the United States, the drop is hardly uniform. Last week, for example, the Buffalo area set records with an early snowstorm.

The ski industry, which expects higher temperatures, less snow and shorter seasons in the coming decades, is seen a bit like the canary in the coal mine of climatology.

Daniel Luzer is GOVERNING's news editor.
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