Ski resorts face possibility of a future without snow

Climate change study warns that winter play in San Bernardino Mountains could be rarer

In the not-so-distant future it might not be possible to attempt a uniquely Southern California tradition: surfing and skiing in the same day.

Snowfall, which was nonexistent this season until this week, has long been sporadic in local mountains due to our trademark warm and sunny weather. That inconsistency is one reason why Big Bear Lake's Snow Summit resort helped pioneer the art and science of machine-made snow more than 60 years ago.

But a new study out of Dartmouth College shows those conditions have also made snowfall in our mountains particularly sensitive to climate change. So sensitive that ski resorts might be hard-pressed to stay in their current business.

Global warming has caused total snowfall levels to decline significantly across the Southwest over the past 40 years, the study shows. Some spots now often get 40% less snow than they averaged before 1980.

For now, local snow droughts are still being interrupted — more often by more extreme storms, like last winter's blizzards that blocked tourists from getting to the San Bernardino Mountains for a week and wreaked havoc on some communities for months. As global warming accelerates, though, lead researcher Alex Gottlieb said even winter storms will increasingly mean rain, not snow, for local mountains. So annual snowfall totals are projected to drop more rapidly here, in the Northeast and in parts of Europe in the decades to come.

“I think the picture moving

forward is pretty unambiguous. We expect snow to continue to decline and to decline faster,” Gottlieb said. And absent “really, really aggressive mitigation of climate change,” his team's research indicates that the possibility of Southern California

having little to no snow in its mountains “is a very likely reality by the end of the century.”

For now, machine-made snow can help fill the gaps. Area resorts, which have access to solid capital thanks to increas

PHOTOS BY WATCHARA PHOMICINDA — STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER Snowboarders and skiers head to the chairlift at Mountain High Resort near Wrightwood on Jan. 30. A recent Dartmouth College study shows that snow could become rare in Southern California, putting ski resorts in a tricky spot.

A snowboarder carves down the slopes at Mountain High Resort near Wrightwood on Jan. 30.