Skiers to winter: Go to El
AP Photo
COMMENTARY
My ski boots have been in the back of the car for about a month now. Not that that’s an altogether uncommon occurrence, especially seeing as my kayak paddle is also still tucked away amidst the clutter, but the boots aren’t there for the reason they should be.
There’s no anticipatory need to have my gear with me at all times, should a storm take a sudden turn and deliver much-needed snow to the mountains of New England, no inherent feel that, at any point, the temperature is going to turn in order to finally allow some decent — hell, any — snowmaking. Instead, the boots are merely with me in case I have the time to go and have an adjustment done on them in order to alleviate some of the discomfort the Langes delivered in their rookie season.
When I get around to it.
There’s hardly an impetus. Not when December greets us with daily highs in the 50’s, with a dearth of snow on the way.
Erich Reinbolz of Holden ascends the the Ralph’s Run ski trail on a strip of man made snow while doing some back country skiing at Wachusett Mountain on December 10.
It might get worse before it gets any better for the New England ski industry, on pace to witness what should be a record warm December in the Boston area.The average temperature to date in the city has been a balmy 46.6 degrees. The warmest December on record was in 2006, averaging a mere 41 degrees.
“All of this stuff does not bode well as far as getting some good December skiing,’’ Josh Fox, author of “The Single Chair Weather Blog,’’ a detailed weather outlook for Vermont ski areas, and specifically, Mad River Glen, said during an interview for a recent Boston Globe story. “Especially for the places that are really highly-dependent on natural snow. They can’t make snow on some of their expert terrain, which is more dependent on natural snow. As far as getting good terrain open, it doesn’t look good.’’
Neat.
It’s an understatement to say it’s been a brutal beginning to the 2015-16 skiing and riding season in New England, and we’re not even a year removed from a winter that ranks among the most plentiful in the industry’s history. It’s all thanks to this winter’s El Nino, the strongest that meteorologists have witnessed in nearly 20 years.
“At least from what we’ve seen, and what we expect to see for the month of December, we’re kind of seeing the patterns we saw back in the real strong events with mild weather really across — if not the entire country — certainly the northern half to two-thirds of the country,’’ said Mike Halpert, deputy director of NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center.
“Longer-term for the rest of the winter, again there’s nothing that we’re seeing that would make us back off of the forecast we issued last month where we favored a milder than average winter. It doesn’t say necessarily that much about snow certainly, because we do favor for Boston, and really up the whole East Coast, a wetter-than-average winter.’’
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration describes an El Nino as a pattern that develops when sea surface temperatures are warmer than average in the equatorial Pacific for more than a season. This tends to impact winter weather in North America in various degrees based on the strength of the system in question.
Each El Nino is different, but the 2015-16 version has been compared to the two strongest on record, which occurred during the winters of 1997-98 and 1982-83.
“They’ve all behaved a little differently, but none of them, I don’t think, you’d classify as an epic winter,’’ Fox said. “I don’t think it’s fair to expect anything like that this year.’’
That’s left a region of skiers and riders itching for some semblance of hope that winter can be salvaged, and ski areas and resorts on edge with the all-important holiday vacation period only two weeks away, which can account for an estimated 15-20 percent of a resort’s annual business, according to Mad River Glen marketing director Eric Friedman.
“We just down and lay low,’’ Friedman said. We don’t spend money and we just hope for the snow to come.’’
Mad River Glen is one of a handful of ski areas in New England yet to open this season. Those resorts that have opened have been limited in both the amount and quality of terrain they have been able to offer.
“When it doesn’t snow and we’re not open, most of the places the skiing isn’t that great,’’ Friedman said. “It’s very limited and they have to stay open to fill their hotels and all the other ancillary things that they do. We don’t have to do that.’’
Stowe Mountain Resort is skiing and riding on only 21 of 116 trails; New Hampshire’s Bretton Woods on only a dozen of its 62 trails. Vermont’s Bolton Valley last week was forced to postpone its opening day until Dec. 19, and locally, Wachusett Mountain in Princeton and Jiminy Peak in Hancock, have both been forced to close midweek thanks to the uncooperative weather that is hardly conducive to snowmaking.
Skiers embrace the warm temperatures during the first weekend of the 2015-2016 ski season at Mount Snow Resort in West Dover, Vt.
If some recent, weaker El Ninos are any indication, the skiing and riding season may not be impacted long-term by the snow drought of November and December. Fox pointed out two more moderate El Nino seasons, the winters of 2006-07 and 2009-10, which both also started out slowly, only to be hit hard by major snowstorms during February. The famed Valentine’s Day storm in February of 2007, dumped nearly two feet of snow on some areas of Vermont, while what came to become known as “Snowmageddon’’ three years later spread that amount across much of New England.
“Even if the snowfall comes in a little below average, we have seen these five to six-week stretches of great weather,’’ Fox said. “Some of the southern branch systems that El Nino can help produce are so powerful that if you do get a little bit of cold air, the snow can really pile up.’’
It’s not how you start, but how you finish, I suppose.
“I suspect that what we’ve seen the last few weeks is probably about as warm as we’re going to get,’’ Halpert said. “The weekly values we’re looking at are really as warm as we’ve ever seen in that particular area. I would expect that as we go through the winter those departures will at least start to decline.’’
Finally. But probably not in time for many to say, “see you in January,’’ leaving many resorts with the holiday pressure that only snow can cure.
Contact Eric Wilbur at: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter: @GlobeEricWilbur and Facebook www.facebook.com/GlobeEricWilbur
Photos: Santa Speedo race in Boston
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