PART IV- RECREATION
Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow
The weather outside is frightful. Source: Tumblr
Welcome to December and welcome to a new section in our journey through the drying Southwest, recreation! Snow! Now I bet that's not a word you thought you'd here much of here with all the previous talks of drought, rain and deserts. Yet, the higher altitudes of the Rockies in the Southwest are affected by the changing climate. Snowfall, or the lack of snowfall, plays a huge role in the Colorado economy. Look at the map below, it represents just some of Colorado's most beloved ski resorts by celebrities on glamorous retreats to families on vacation to locals who live there.
To ski or snowboard... now that's a question! Ski resorts in Colorado. Source: Dive Fish Snow Travel
But what's the problem? Aren't the ski slopes high enough away to escape the aridification? Well as Painter et al. (2007) discuss, drought in the Colorado plateau causes dust to blow into the mountains. This dust then increases ablation and shortens the snow cover season from half a month to a full month! The lower snow albedo and shorter coverage caused by the dust also leads to earlier snow melts. Painter et al. (2010) found that in the Upper Colorado River Basin snow was melting on average 3 weeks earlier and that the earlier season meant the Basin lost 5% of water to increased evapotranspiration. This has huge implications for the already thirsty Southwest; less water means more problems. So can places like Vail and Aspen survive if they're receiving shorter snow seasons and earlier melts?
Last year Colorado PBS (2013) did an excellent piece on the future of the ski resorts. I want to discuss some of their arguments they make on the future of these towns. Without the snowfall many of these towns will struggle as business have to shut and people lose their jobs. Across the U.S., on a bad snow year the skiing industry loses $1 billion and this then threatens the almost 200,000 people employed in this industry. It's no doubt that Colorado makes up a large part of the American ski season as New England skiing has taken a dramatic decline in recent years. Yet as PBS discusses in the early 2010s Aspen only got 50% of its average snowfall.
However, the video points out that ski visitor numbers aren't changing (with 11-12 million ski visitors on average annually across the industry for the past 10 years) but that the variation is more site specific. While Vail might have a bad ski season Utah could be overwhelmed with snow. Because of this the ski industry isn't taking unified action to educate and protect the snowy climates, instead it's a more 'every-slope-for-himself' strategy of management.
So are there alternatives? Can the ski season survive the drying Southwest? Well there is an option to manually produce snow. However, in Aspen it takes 600,000 gallons of water a minute to make snow for just 4 mountains that cover just 10% of the terrain (PBS). Obviously this can't be a longterm solution. In a drying environment that is an irresponsible use of water and power and the majority of smaller resorts will not be able to handle the cost of maintaining this and could crumble.
So what are the mountains to do? As the Southwest gets drier and drier, the slopes will eventually as well. There won't be a ski industry left to save if we don't manage the reduction of snow through managing the entirety of Southwest aridification and stabilize the dusty deserts.
If only Elsa could let it snow over here! Source: Movie Pilot
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