Janisse Ray, an outdoor recreation enthusiast in Danville, Vermont, got so frustrated when the West River hadn’t frozen by last January that she donned a wet suit and floated downstream in an inner tube, holding aloft a sign that said “Where’s winter?”

Where indeed? The January/February 2008 issue of E – The Environmental Magazine (now posted at www.emagazine.com) reports that climate change is already affecting many of our most beloved winter sports, from ice-skating to skiing to maple sugaring. It’s not surprising, considering that 2006 was the warmest year on record in the U.S., and 1998 was the second warmest. While winter is still highly unpredictable (a week before E’s issue made it to newsstands, the country was hit with epic snowfalls and low temperatures) the warming trend is clear.

E’s cover package also includes some colorful reminiscing about the historic snowfalls many of us remember from childhood, plus an SOS from some of the country’s leading winter athletes, who are having to venture far and wide to find seasonal snow. Pro snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, who has won more halfpipe competitions than any other female snowboarder, is watching the shorter, milder winters in her hometown of Aspen, Colorado, the deteriorating snowbanks on worldwide slopes and the last-minute cancellations of major snowboarding events.

“We moved to Aspen when I was 10,” says Bleiler. “I remember the first year we went to school there were avalanche danger days. The snow would rise so high in the valley. Then this past season they had to cancel the Grand Prix in New Jersey because it was too warm to even make snow.”

By the end of the century, temperatures in the Northeastern states are likely to rise by eight to 12 degrees Fahrenheit (at which time snow-covered days will have been reduced to half of what we traditionally experience). A 2007 Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment report, prepared by the Union of Concerned Scientists, says that under some higher-emission scenarios, “Only western Maine is projected to retain a reliable ski season by the end of the century, and only northern New Hampshire would support a snowmobiling season longer than two months.”

Consider these facts:

• Snowmobile sales slid 12 percent in the most recent accounting from the International Snowmobile Manufacturers Association. Total sales of 79,814 in 2006 contrasted sharply with the 170,325 sold in 1997.
• Cliff Brown of the University of New Hampshire notes that the state had 65 downhill ski areas in the 1970s, but only 20 remain. New Hampshire winters warmed 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit in the 20th century, and snowmaking alone hasn’t saved the day, especially for the low-lying family facilities. The surviving resorts, Brown says, are larger, tend to be corporate owned, and are located at higher elevations. To stay in business, the resorts have also diversified from skiing. On a recent fall day, the lower slopes at Bromley Mountain in southern Vermont looked more like an amusement park than a ski area.
• Northern New England’s climate was once ideal for maple sugaring, but as temperatures rise the industry is inexorably migrating north. Over the past four decades, the traditional mid-February to April maple sugaring season has slowly gotten shorter. According to a University of Vermont study, it now starts a week early and ends 10 days early, with a net loss of three production days. Long-time tappers worry that, by 2100, there may no longer be a maple sugar industry in New England.

The warming changes already visible are, to cite a particularly apt cliche, “the tip of the iceberg.” In the next few decades, global warming will be shaped by many different factors, with relatively unpredictable results. But the scientific consensus is near unanimous that the loss of predictable and comforting winter patterns will be a major consequence. Nostalgia for snowy winters past and “the way it was” will be a major growth industry, even as skiing, skating, snowman building and maple syrup-making gradually recede into our collective memory.

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