Novembers Gone, December is Toast, January is Next

Welcome to the winter that never was.  After enduring a hot summer in 2025 and the record dry Water Year ending October 1, we experienced a record wet October that would make the calendar year look average and inspire hope for the coming winter.  That was not to be, as our hope was dashed against the exposed rocks on the mountains over the next three months.  Although precipitation was copious in December, it was too warm to snow and make snow, even if they had the water.  If it was colder we would have been buried in several feet of early natural powder, setting the stage for a lucrative Christmas and a Happy New Year of skiing. Bah Humbug.  Not this year.  

So I took another look at the PRISM geospatial database out of Oregon State, that calibrates nicely with an accepted global average annual temperature rise of 1 – 2 degree in the United States, over the past Millennium.  We have seen a 2 -3 degree raise in average annual temperatures in Park City over that period and a 5 – 10 degree raise in summer morning low temperatures, with most of it just in the last 50 years.  Now that is real, anecdotal change we all can wrap our heads around.  These temperatures are not rising linearly at a steady rate but rather exponentially at an ever-increasing rate.  Dr. Simon Wang showed this to us 20 years ago at a climate conference at Utah State, with the repositioning of the winter jet stream and the atmospheric rivers, and Dr. Upman Lall showed us an Ai model of the drying of the Great Salt Lake as well, but no one would listen.

   Recently, I took a look at the monthly average temperatures for the last ten and thirty years, long enough to have a valid sample set yet still capture the most recent trends.  The 135 year data set created by Prism shows similar results that are washed out a bit by pre-industrial numbers at the turn of the last century.  While our average annual temperature has risen almost a degree, just over this shorter period, the average November has risen 2 degrees and December has risen 3 degrees.   Astonishingly, the November 2025 average temperature in Park City was 10.5 degrees higher than the 10 and 30 year average and was 11.4 degrees higher in December 2025 than  the decadal average.  January 2026, by comparison was only 5.1 degrees warmer than average but felt like a complete anomaly to the average January temperatures that have actually been dropping in the last ten years.  There is no denying that, even anecdotally, it is getting warmer.  We are losing weeks, if not months at the front and back end of the ski season.  We are breaking records by 5-10 degrees now.  Even a blind man knows when it is not snowing.

This may not seem like much but this is an entire monthly average over only ten and thirty years. This occurs at a critical time of year when plus or minus a degree or two can make or break the entire ski industry.  If they miss Thanksgiving or don’t fill beds for Christmas, the season is toast.  Additionally, June and July monthly temps have increased an average of 2 degrees in ten years.  Thankfully January – May average monthly temps have dropped a degree and high temps have dropped 2-3 degrees although morning low Ave temps continue to rise for every month.  It is good to know that in the heart of the winter the daily temps remain cool and robust.  

But another analysis I undertook shows that  the spring runoff season peaks in May now and not June, and we have lost almost a month on the back end of the ski season.  Local Brian McInerney, formally of the NWS, and I have been preaching this locally for years as The Water Guys.  Now we are saying I told you so.  It’s not a minor challenge or a nagging issue to contend with, it is a major problem for us all, in our first world town, and throughout the second and third world. 

It makes me think, ‘what are all these developers thinking’ with their five billion dollar investments that are wallowing in the mud in the middle of January.  I wonder if we will have snow for the Olympics, let alone Christmas.  Water flows to money but not so much with snow.  Perhaps we should rethink the timing of the ski season and have MLK day be the new Thanksgiving and Presidents Week be Christmas and New Years.  We try to open the resorts with10 inches of snow but close them down every year in the spring with 100.   What is wrong with this picture?

The ski industry has put the risk of climate change on us by making us commit to passes by September 1, thereby exonerating themselves from the bad snow year they know is coming.  I would be nice if they had a little more skin in the game.  They are suffering this year with losses from condos and concessions, but it could be a lot worse.  

 I did read a local resort’s strategic plan and the word skiing was not even mentioned until the second half of the publication.  Maybe they see the writing on the wall by promoting other recreation and lifestyles, or maybe they see an opportunity to bait and switch.  It is like them selling all the front row, view condos on a slope-side project and then building another building in front of it.  Either way they knowingly sell a commodity that won’t exist for very long, taking the money and run.  The climate is changing and we should change with it.  Acknowledge, accept, adapt, adjust. Improvise.  Overcome.  Like the Marines.  Ooohrah.  Semper Flexibus.  Reinvent winter.