Winter sports are no fan of warmth
As data shows the temperatures rising, recreational sector sees downhill profits
GRAFTON — Melissa Miller clearly remembers when winters were the real thing.
Miller, 44, grew up in Cohoes and as soon as it got cold the family would put a large tarp down in a yard near the house, hose it down and proceed to go ice skating on the homemade rink. There were frequent sledding parties on the hills, with races and sled bowling where they would slide down in the old saucer-shaped sleds and knock over bowling pins.
“It was my favorite memory as a kid,” she said.
These days, Miller is the manager at Grafton Lakes State Park and one of her wintertime worries centers on when it will stay cold enough to go ice fishing on the ponds there.
Twice this year the park had to postpone a popular ice fishing derby, which was rescheduled for this past Saturday. Miller said winters seem to be getting shorter and starting later.
That’s more than a perception. Weather records show a slow but steady rise in daytime high temperatures, which can mean the difference between snow and rain. Meteorologists these days refer to slush events, or a mixture of sleet and rain, when years ago it would have been snow.
That change has lots of implications for life in places like upstate New York where activities from ice fishing to skiing and snowmobiling are a way of life which helps define the region. It also impacts a range of tourist and leisure-related businesses.
The changes, ranging from delayed ice fishing contests to shorter ski seasons that require more snowmaking, are carrying a cost, which is quantifiable. In 2012, the Natural Resource Defense Council, University of New Hampshire and Protect our Winters, a group focused on climate change, released a study that found winter sports add $846 million to the New York state economy.
The group concluded that nationally, sports such as skiing and snowmobiling constitute a $67 billion market supporting more than 600,000 jobs,
A decade on, those figures haven’t been updated. But weather records have and continue to point toward attenuated winters.
Despite the 20-hour cold snap that swept through the Northeast last Friday night and Saturday, this winter has been unusually warm and dry.
According to the National Weather Service, temperatures in January in Albany reached at least 30 degrees Fahrenheit each day. That’s something that hasn’t happened in the past when January temperatures normally reached highs into the teens or 20s.
“January has always been a risk (for a thaw), but now it’s a bad risk,” said Curt Stager, a member of the natural science faculty at Paul Smith’s College near Saranac Lake in the Adirondacks. In that part of the world, a winter thaw is viewed as a risk since it disrupts sports like skiing, snowshoeing and snowmobiling.
Stager has looked at historical climate trends and he believes, based on current conditions, Adirondack winters will be a month shorter by 2100. One of the best signs can be seen at Lake Champlain, which for the past few years has not completely frozen. It’s those semi-frozen lakes that have bedeviled ice fishermen this year.
“It definitely affects a lot of business,” said Kevin Charbonneau, acting manager at the Wiggly Worms bait shop in Ballston Spa.
The shop maintains a log book where customers and visitors sign in to win prizes such as $1,000 ice augers or guided trips worth $600. Last year the bait shop had about 1,700 sign-ins by February. This year it was 640 as of early last week.
“The winters have systematically become shorter,” he said.
As well as the delayed tournament in Grafton, the Fulton Montgomery Chamber of Commerce recently canceled its ice fishing contest on the Great Sacandaga Lake, although the raffle event will still take place Saturday. The city of Amsterdam has also canceled a winter carnival due to warm weather.
Even though the ice may be good in spots, event promoters often face issues getting insurance if the ice isn’t of a certain thickness, Charbonneau saidd.
“Definitely the season has gotten shorter,” said Mike Conroy who runs Conroy’s bait shop in Watervliet.
Snowmobilers have had their frustrations as well. Aside from risky ice on the lakes, they’ve had to contend with sparse snow on some of their traditional trails, delaying the season’s full start. That’s sparked debates about whether ATVs should be allowed on some snowmobile trails when there isn’t enough snow.
That discussion comes as manufacturers are offering special tracks that resemble miniature tank or bulldozer treads that fasten to the wheels. That allows travel through mud and gravel as well snow.
“That’s what people are talking about,” said Chris Holland, a snowmobiler who typically rides near Herkimer County’s Old Forge, a well-known snowmobile center.
Holland works at a garage in town where they do a brisk business in repairing broken snowplows — at least in winters when there is heavy snowfall.
As with snowmobiling, technological fixes and marketing have kept downhill ski resorts going, despite the warm winters. The predominance of season-long multi-mountain passes, which give skiers access to a variety of resorts for a onetime fee, have kept the slopes full this year, despite the fickle weather.
And snowmaking technology continues to advance. The latest development is equipment that can create ice flakes, simulating snow, in temperatures that are above freezing.
“Snowmaking is king,” said Jason Sawin, a ski area and snowmaking consultant.
Operations that have continually invested and upgraded their systems have done well, while others have fallen by the wayside as temperatures have warmed, he said.
Sawin is based in Idaho but travels nationally. Earlier in the week he was at the Snowshoe ski resort in West Virginia, where there has been little natural snow this winter. But the resort, which has 11,000 beds for guests, is bustling. He’s also worked with a snow tubing center near the North Carolina-Georgia border that has done well thanks to its snowmaking system.
On the other hand, he has seen ski resorts in the Rocky Mountains fail in part because they didn’t have enough snowmaking to get them through drought years.
Cross-country skiers, have it harder. Some small areas or competition venues use snowmaking but putting snow down on a long narrow trail, or in backcountry wilderness isn’t feasible.
“This has been a particularly rough winter,” said Josh Wilson, executive director at the Barkeaters Trail Alliance, an Adirondack nonprofit group that maintains cross-country ski and mountain bike trails.
“Meltdowns are nothing new but the frequency is increasing,” he said of the thaws that turn snowy trails to mud or muck. In mid-February, he said, they are experiencing what used to be early-season ski conditions.
“It’s hard to say what’s normal anymore,” he said.
The new normal seems to be a steady upward trend of daily high temperatures. Nick Bassill, a meteorologist at the University at Albany’s atmospheric sciences center, pointed to records showing a rise in median temperatures over the decades.
In January, for instance, the average high temperature was 31.1 degrees between 1971 and 2000. It was 32.8 degrees between 1991 and 2020. Likewise, snowfall for those periods fell from 17.7 inches to 15.6 inches.
That “doesn’t seem like much, but when our average high is already near freezing it can make a big difference,” Bassill said.
“We basically gets slush storms,” rather than snowstorms at the current temperature, he saidd.