Wintry weather Typhoon Fern introduced Colorado’s mountain cities a little of what they’ve spent weeks hoping for.
It snowed 23 inches (58 centimeters) on the Crested Butte ski lodge over the weekend of Jan. 24-25, 2026. Aspen Snowmass were given 13 inches (33 cm).
It was once a welcome exchange in Colorado, the place the ski season is off to a gradual get started. By means of Thanksgiving 2025, Colorado had simplest about 45% of the common snowpack it most often does at the moment of 12 months. Thanksgiving weekend is when many western ski hotels, equivalent to Steamboat and Vail, usually open for the season.
By means of January 2026, the snowpack had higher simplest reasonably to 57% of common. About part of the runs have been open at central Colorado hotels in overdue January.
Colorado’s ski season began out dry, with lower than part the common snowpack in November.
Hyoung Chang/Getty Pictures
On most sensible of a dry fall, Colorado has been unseasonably heat. Denver’s common air temperature for December 2025 was once 11 levels Fahrenheit (6 levels Celsius) hotter than standard.
This phenomenon isn’t completely new. During the last 4 a long time, Colorado has noticed a decline in November snow fall, which is an issue for creating the snowpack base for ski runs. There has additionally been a decline in March snowpack, which will scale back skier numbers right through spring wreck, when many households and college-age skiers usually flock to the mountains.
Regardless of the welcome snow fall, the forecast for the remainder of the season, which runs thru April, doesn’t glance just right. It’s anticipated to proceed to be hotter than common around the Colorado mountains.
The nice and cozy temperatures and loss of snow in Colorado are an issue for skiers and ski hotels. This has translated right into a rising financial have an effect on at the state’s mountain communities.
We’re a snow hydrologist and a historian of the ski trade. We’re thinking about how this 12 months’s proceeding low snow fall will impact Colorado’s US$5 billion ski trade, the state’s atmosphere and water assets around the western U.S.
Growing snow
The ski trade is dependent upon herbal snow falling from the sky. Herbal snow fall can also be supplemented via hotels making their very own snow, regularly in a race to be the primary ski house to open. This 12 months, Keystone opened first after starting to make snow earlier than Halloween.
Ski hotels use snow weapons that use high-pressure air to blow superb water debris that freeze and shape snow. However to make snow, the wet-bulb temperature must be chillier than 28 F (minus 2 C). The moist bulb temperature is a mixture of air temperature, humidity and air stress.
Snowmaking in Colorado can assist ski hotels to start out the season, however they nonetheless want snow to fall from the sky.
Boulder Day by day Digital camera/by means of Getty Pictures
Snowmaking covers just a fraction of any ski lodge in Colorado. Even essentially the most in depth snowmaking hotels like Keystone are simplest in a position to hide 40% in their runs with humanmade snow. Different hotels can quilt lower than 10%. Snowmaking in Colorado supplies the bottom for the ski season to start out, however it might probably’t exchange a season with out a snow.
By means of comparability, ski spaces in different states, equivalent to Arizona’s Snowbowl, depend on snowmaking during the iciness. Snowmaking can quilt maximum of a ski lodge within the japanese U.S., the place hotels have a tendency to be smaller than ones within the West.
Snowmaking has environmental prices. On common, snowmaking accounts for 67% of a ski lodge’s electrical energy prices and consumes billions of gallons of water.
Snow is made the use of water taken from streams right through low-flow situation, or instances when much less water is to be had. The water is largely saved at the ski slope, with about 80% flowing again into the streams when it melts.
Because of water rights regulation distinctive to the western U.S., a ski lodge can not simply use extra water to make extra snow with out going thru an intensive and regularly dear prison procedure.
Irrespective of how a lot snow can also be made, Colorado’s ski spaces most commonly depend on herbal snow fall.
Historical past of snowmaking
This 12 months is a ways from the primary time Colorado’s ski trade has struggled with a loss of snow. Many spaces within the state didn’t see snow right through the iciness of 1976-77 till after the December vacations. The loss of snow fall led to skier numbers to drop a staggering 38% from the former season.
That dry season satisfied the ski trade to take issues into its personal fingers. In the summertime of 1976, Wintry weather Park Ski Space made a $1.2 million funding in snowmaking, which stored the next season. Different better ski hotels adopted go well with and invested closely within the generation over the next 5 years.
A November 1981 archival picture from The Denver Put up displays the Loveland ski lodge west of Denver after it opened the use of routinely made snow.
Denver Put up/by means of Getty Pictures
During the last decade, Vail Inns, proprietor of 42 ski hotels international, has invested greater than $100 million in snowmaking to atone for marginal snow years.
Those investments replicate a broader competition inside the trade as hotels compete for a restricted choice of skiers. By means of the top of the Nineties, snowmaking was once understood as very important for ski hotels around the nation.
What’s subsequent
Low snow years don’t seem to be only a drawback for snowboarding. Colorado has a semi-arid local weather, so water saved within the snowpack is a a very powerful water useful resource. In Colorado, as much as 80% of the water comes from snow, so below-average snow fall most often method there might be a drought right through the summer season months that practice. Dry winters additionally result in extra wildfires.
Snowpack additionally impacts summer season tourism actions in Colorado that depend on water from snowmelt, equivalent to whitewater rafting, whitewater parks, fishing and comparable river actions.
Snowpack has an immediate have an effect on on Colorado’s summer season tourism, together with fishing.
UCG/Getty Pictures
Coloradans would possibly hope for snow to modify the process this iciness. It’s took place earlier than, like with the March 2003 Colorado snowfall, when 3 toes (1 meter) of snow fell in an afternoon. Or within the iciness of 2010-11, which began out drier than common and went directly to be the wettest 12 months on document.
The ski trade has attempted to insulate itself from unhealthy snow years thru season move gross sales and diversifying leisure choices. Vail Inns and Alterra Mountain Corporate require skiers and snowboarders to shop for their Epic and Ikon season passes via October or spend upward of $300 for an afternoon raise price ticket. However the excessive prices of snowboarding are making the game extra unique.
A large number of ski hotels, equivalent to Wintry weather Park, have invested closely in summer season actions equivalent to mountain cycling and song gala’s to extend earnings. However you’ll be able to wager your mittens that individuals in Colorado’s mountain cities are hoping for every other giant unload of herbal snow – and once imaginable.
