How ski resorts are adapting to climate change

In much of the Southeast, ski seasons are starting later and natural snow is getting harder to come by. But ski resorts are utilizing advanced snowmaking technology to keep the mountains white and skiiers on the slopes.

Jess Dobson traveled from Raleigh to Snowshoe Resort in West Virginia after a storm dumped coveted fresh powder ahead of the busy President’s Day weekend.

“I feel like the season starts a little bit later every year and it’s a lot of artificial snow,” Dobson said.

According to data analyzed by Climate Central, snowfall decreased across most of the U.S. between 1970-2019. Winter is the fastest warming season for most of the country and the number of days with temperatures below 32°F is expected to continue to decline over the coming decades.

“Natural snow is just icing on the cake for us, so we approach it as if we’re not going to have it all,” said Shawn Cassell, marketing director for Snowshoe. “We’ve got to make the snow.”

Snowshoe has invested more than 5 million dollars in recent years to upgrade snowmaking technology at the resort to more efficient, high-volume cannons.

“We used to get about six or seven days in a row of weather cold enough to make snow, now it seems like it’s just two or three until you get a warm up,” Cassell said. “So we really have to weatherproof ourselves for those upswings and now we’re making more snow in those tighter windows than we ever had before.”

Snowshoe operators quantified the snowmaking capabilities of the resort: If every gun was pointed at a football field, they’d be able to make 27 feet of snow in 12 hours.

“They call it fake snow, but it’s still real snow,” said Talia Freeman, a marketing director at Beech Mountain in North Carolina. “It’s just made with a machine and humans instead of Mother Nature.”

Beech has also installed new snow blowers in recent years to compensate for more unpredictable winter weather, including an all-weather system on its tubing runs.

“It has an enclosed space that can produce snow inside [of the machine] and it’s able to make snow upwards of 60 degrees, so that’s been a real game changer for us,” Freeman said.

Resorts across the East have also been promoting off-season activities, such as mountain biking, to draw tourists year-round.

“Mountain biking has become for summer what skiing has for us for the winter,” Cassell said. “We’re trying to become less heavily dependent on winter as a business.”