Is this year's early snow an aberration? By Greg Marr
 As I write this in mid-December, there's snow
throughout much of the region. Even here in Central Wisconsin, we started skinig Dec. 11. Amazing. And I actually got in some skiing in November. My brother-in-law, Greg Groeschel, and I did the drive to ABR near Ironwood on November 29. Conditions were wonderful and it was great to be on snow, but I have to admit our approach to this first time out was a bit foolish.
We pulled in the lot, jumped from the car and took off like madmen. My
skis were slipping this way and that as I tried to control sticks that are noticeably longer and harder to manage than roller skis. Now, a wise skier might take it a little easy, get used to being on snow by skiing some of the more gentle terrain first. Makes sense, right? Well, not us. No, we attacked every stinking hill they have. All of them, even that evil drop right after you get back into the woods where in mid-season I feel like
I'm mountain climbing on the way back out of there. Full of ourselves, on the three-hour drive we talked of skiing three loops for about 36-38K. After our first time, however, the folly of that notion began to set in. So did we take it easy the second time, humbled by the hills and the first day on skis? Heck no we did all the hills a second time around. After that, any notions of a third trip around were left back on the trail somewhere. Add to that I took three pairs of skis, all pretty much waxed the same, a yellow-red combo for 32-34 degrees, as was forecast. Now, you'd think I just might have along a pair with good old Rex blue. Nope. Temps stayed around 26-28, so my skis lacked decent glide. I justified that by deciding I was getting a better workout. And, of course, I didn't dress properly because I thought it would be warmer. A strong wind all
day probably put the windchill in the 15 degree range and me without proper protection for a vital body part.
From all that, you might think we didn't have all that good a day. Quite to the contrary it was fantastic to be out there again. Now, I might skip some of the hills my next time out but I doubt it.
Despite this early snow, the lack of it recently has now been shown to be a scientific fact. Skinnyski.com recently posted a report from
NASA's Earth Observatory Web site that will surely disturb those of us who welcome the white stuff.
"Looking at states that typically get snow," the report notes, "197 of 260 weather stations have reported fewer days with snowfall since 1948, according to statistics provided by Dale Kaiser, a meteorologist in the Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The survey looked at the
30-day period from Nov. 25 to Dec. 24 from 1948 to 2001."
Worse yet, this decrease in snow days is most pronounced east of the Mississippi River good for Minnesota, bad for Wisconsin. In this region, "117 of 125 stations reported an average of five fewer days with snowfall."
In our area, there are a number of reporting stations among the "leaders" in having fewer snow days: Medford, Wis., with 11.7 fewer, Sault Ste.
Marie, Mich., 9.3, Minneapolis, 6, and Chicago, 4.8. If you live in Hastings, Neb., however, you're seeing 5.9 days with more snow. Those lucky Nebraskans.
And it's not likely to get better, according to some Rueters reports I found online.
"There is no doubt that the composition of the atmosphere is changing because of human activities, and today greenhouse gases are the largest human influence on global climate," wrote Thomas Karl, director of the
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Climatic Data Center, and Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research.
"The likely result is more frequent heat waves, droughts, extreme precipitation events and related impacts, e.g., wildfires, heat stress, vegetation changes and sea-level rise."
What this means, according to the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP)
study, is that "melting glaciers, raising the snow line up mountains (is) crippling the ski industry."
"The temperature changes will be more violent in the northern hemisphere during winter, so ski resorts are seriously at risk," said Rolf Burki, who carried out the research.
"Unless tough decisions are taken about global warming from politicians to ski resorts themselves polluting less skiing will look very different to
future generations than it does now," added Klaus Toepfer, executive director of UNEP. This was in reference to less mountain snow, but I think we can make an inference that less snow high up is going to mean less snow for us, too.
There might be a bright side to this gloomy forecast, however, according to the EPA Web site. "Most of the United States is expected to warm, although sulfates may limit warming in some areas. Scientists currently
are unable to determine which parts of the United States will become wetter or drier, but there is likely to be an overall trend toward increased precipitation and evaporation, more intense rainstorms, and drier soils."
If you like me want to try to take something good from all this, I'm going to hope the "increased precipitation" occurs in the Upper Midwest and takes the form of snow in coming years. If not, I'm afraid I'll be
contributing to the problem by more frequent drives to the U.P.
| |
