Warm Winters Are Shutting Down Alpine Ski Areas In Europe

A French ski area closed and abandoned because winters
no longer provide enough snow to make many
ski resorts viable. Photo by Thomas
Valentin/Guardian 

Europe just got over what has become in recent years a rare blast of winter weather. 

It's only been a week and a half of chilly, snowy weather, and who knows what the rest of the winter will be like over there.  

Cold, snowy spells in Europe's ski areas are getting more and more unreliable, this month notwithstanding. 

The warmer, climate changed world means that the European ski industry in suffering. And in many cases, disappearing. 

As the Guardian tells us: 

"In France, there are today 113 ski lifts totaling nearly 40 miles in length that have been abandoned, nearly three-quarters of them in protected areas. It is not just ski infrastructure. The Mountain Wilderness association estimates that there are more than 3,000 abandoned structures dotted around French mountains, slowly degrading Europe's richest wild terrain. This includes military, industrial and forestry waste, such as old cables, bits of barbed wire, fencing and old machinery."

Some closed resorts look like they were hit by a neutron bomb. Everything is still the way it was left last year, or a few years ago, but all the people are gone 

The Céüze 2000 ski resort in the southern French Alps closed for the season at the end of the winter, 2018. Pretty much everyone assumed it would open the following winter. 

But it didn't. Six years after that 2018 spring closing, a yellowed newspaper dated March 8, 2018 remains on a table next a half-empty body of water. A staff scheduled remained pinned on a wall.

The resort needed at least three months per year of decent skiing to at least break even.  That had pretty much stopped happening. 

The resort had been open for 85 years. But it is now one of many ghost ski areas in the French Alps and elsewhere. The Guardian reported that 186 French ski resorts have closed since winter snows began getting unreliable in the 1990s. By the 2010s, a few winter nights were as warm as summer nights should be. 

France now has 113 ski lifts totaling almost 40 miles that have been abandoned. 

One major problem with the shuttered ski areas is pollution. Equipment rusts and that rust runs into the ground. Insulation and other material from deteriorating buildings scatters around the landscape.

The Guardian says in France, the law requires ski lifts to be removed if they are no longer in use, but the law applies to ski lifts built after 2017.

However, many of the older defunct ski areas in France might be left to rot into the ground. 

The problem isn't limited to Europe. As CBC tell us, more than half of the ski resorts in North America have disappeared since the 1970s. There's a lot of reasons for that, but one of them is climate change that have made winters in many areas less reliable. 

In the United States, the average ski season between 2000 and 2019 shortened by five to seven days, according to Earth.org. Those numbers could double or triple by 2050. 

Here in Vermont, skiing is hugely important to the state's economy. Last year was good after a rough start. This year so far has been quite good, too. But in general, winters are getting warmer, which melts the snow almost as fast as it can fall.

At least as measured in Burlington, seven of the top ten warmest winters have occurred since 2001, and the top four since 2016. Vermont ski areas have invested heavily in snow making to recover more quickly from the warm spells. 

Will that be enough, or will Vermont and other Northeast ski areas go the way of the French Alps?

Not immediately, for sure. But eventually, the ever-rising global temperatures don't really bode well for the future of skiing in many places around the world. 

 

Farmer's Almanac To Shutter After 207 Years Of Publication

This year's edition of the Farmer's
Almanac will be its last. It had 
been published yearly since 1818,

 The Farmers' Almanac, a yearly publication that's been around since 1818 is going away. 

The recently released 2026 edition will be its last.

"It is with heavy heart that we share the end of what has not only been an annual tradition in millions of homes and hearths for hundreds of years, but also a way of life, an inspiration for many who realize the wisdom of generations past is the key to the generations of the future," said Editor Sandi Duncan.

In a statement on the Farmers' Almanac website, today's "chaotic media environment" were blamed for the decision to close. 

"Though the Almanac will no longer be available in print or online, its spirit will live on in the values it championed: simplicity sustainability and connection to nature," the message on the publication's website said. 

The Farmers' Almanac was started in 1818 by David Young, a 37-year-old poet and astronomer.  That initial 36-page copy in 1818 contained "Lunations, Conjunctions, Eclipses, Judgement of the Weather and the "Rising and Setting of the Planets." 

And other nuggets of wisdom, of course. 

According to the Washington Post, by some accounts, Abraham Lincoln, used the Farmers'Almanac to help a client avoid a murder conviction. A witness said there was a full moon at 11 p.m. on the night of the murder. But that night, the moon was in its first quarter, and set at 11:57 p.m.

The Farmers' Almanac reached its peak from the Depression era of the mid-1930s to around the mid 1990s. 

Raymond Geiger, whose company, the Geiger Brothers, took over the Almanac in 1934. Its circulation was 86,000 at the time Geiger took over. By the time Geiger died in 1994, the circulation had increased to 4 million. 

The Almanac claimed its weather forecasts for the year, which it said is 85 percent accurate. Most scientists give publications like the Farmers' Almanac about a 50 percent accuracy rate, but that's another story.  

For the record, the Farmers' Almanac's final weather prediction says that New England is in for a "cold, snow-filled" winter season.

Fans of the Farmers' Almanac are crushed by the news. 

"Please don't go. I've grown up with you and want to keep growing older together," one reader wrote. Another said. "I have had FA in may home every year since I was 19 years old. I am now in my 70s. The wit, wisdom and weather have been like a wonderful old friend to me."

The Farmers' Almanac is not to be confused with the Old Farmer's Almanac, that familiar one with the yellow cover. That one is going full steam ahead. The Old Farmers Almanac has been existence since 1792, longer than the soon to be defunct Farmer's Almanac. 

"Rest assured, as sure as the Sun will rise, The Old Farmer's Almanac- with our familiar yellow cover.......will be around for generations to come," the Old Farmer's Almanac said in a Facebook post.  

Meanwhile, the final edition of the Farmer's Almanac can be purchased on Amazon or in numerous retail stores. Its online presence will go dark in December. 

The editors' final statement was poignant. "So go ahead - plant your peas when the daffodils bloom. Watch for a red sky at night. Tell your kids how grandad always swore by the Almanac....That's how our story stays alive"