A skier walks down a patchy ski slope at Whistler, B.C., on Dec. 29, 2023.ETHAN CAIRNS/The Canadian Press
There are no ski runs open on Mount Seymour for the foreseeable future.
A bit west among Vancouver’s North Shore mountain ski resorts, Grouse Mountain is informing skiers it has “limited terrain.” Photos show brown patches along the runs.
Still further west, Cypress Mountain tells skiers the resort appreciates customers’ patience “as we eagerly await the arrival of more snow.”
On Vancouver Island, Mount Washington is promoting groomed runs with “sugary fun to be had.” Discounted tickets are in effect as a result of warm temperatures.
This winter’s unusually warm and dry conditions have meant that ski resorts thousands of urbanites rely on for winter escape have been closed. If the weather doesn’t change, it could be the end of the 2023-24 ski season at some resorts, a grim but very real prospect.
The patchy ski runs are yet more fallout from a winter that is unusually warm and especially dry.
The province’s latest snow bulletin shows British Columbia’s average snowpack is almost 40-per-cent lower than normal, raising concerns about what Premier David Eby this week said were “some of the most dramatic drought conditions that have been seen in our lifetime.”
The bulletin issued Thursday says levels remain “very low” at 61 per cent of normal. That’s substantially worse than this time last year, when the snowpack was 79 per cent of normal.
The snowpack is especially sparse across the South Coast, ranging from 30 per cent of normal on Vancouver Island to 47 per cent in the Lower Fraser region.
John Clague, a climate scientist, and professor emeritus at Simon Fraser University’s department of Earth sciences, said there has been a gradual shortening of typical winter conditions.
“Admittedly, it is an El Niño winter, which is typically characterized by warmer conditions on our coast, but that alone does not explain the warm and relatively dry winter we are experiencing,” he said.
Prof. Clague said on average, winter temperatures are a little warmer than they were a decade or two ago. Slowly, that’s leaving the Metro Vancouver-area mountains in a more precarious position regarding snowfall.
“Our ski hills are right at the border of getting reliable snow,” he said.
“Mountain temperatures are expected to warm a minimum of another 1-2 degrees Celsius as the century progresses, so you can see that these operations are at risk.”
He noted snow-making equipment has helped, but he said the equipment won’t work when the temperature is above 2C, “which raises questions as to whether snow-making machinery is a temporary fix.”
Cypress Mountain Resort, Mt Seymour Ski Resort, Grouse Mountain Resort and Mount Washington Alpine Resort did not respond to requests for comment. John Pomeroy, Canada Research Chair in Water Resources and Climate Change at the University of Saskatchewan, said drought that has caused the ski resorts to close is a nationwide problem.
“It ties into the warm air that has caused the closure of skating on the Rideau Canal in Ottawa and poor lake ice conditions across Canada and low snowpacks across Canada,” he said.
“This is yet another indicator that we are in an exceptional national drought, one made more severe by global warming.”
Mr. Eby said this winter’s conditions could have more devastating impacts than the loss of a ski season.
“Knowing that water levels behind dams for [hydro power] are low, knowing that farmers didn’t have enough water to grow feed for their cattle [last] summer, knowing the forest fire impacts we’ve seen, I am really worried about the summer that’s coming up,” he said at an unrelated news conference last Thursday.
The only thing that “eclipses” his concern about drought is watching atmospheric rivers of rain sweep over California, causing landslides and flooding that have killed several people – a reminder of B.C.’s devastating flooding in fall 2021.
Mr. Eby said it felt like the extreme weather B.C. is experiencing is an “early warning sign for the rest of Canada about what’s coming with climate change.”
Close to 100 wildfires continue to smoulder in the province, holdovers from last year’s record-breaking fire season, he added.
“This marks the year when I learned that fires can actually burn underneath snow. I didn’t know that was a thing.”
With a report from The Canadian Press