Sad start to the 2022-23 ski season

After three years of a ski season blighted by COVID, resorts were hoping to get a good 2022-23 season and to be fair it started off well we had a good few days prior to Christmas. We went back to the UK for a few days over Christmas and as we left on the 23rd it basically started raining, it rained for days both in the Alps and in the UK, it was still raining as we headed back from the UK on the 28th.

Today the runs look more like Easter than January and based on the current forecast it'll be end of January before runs are closer to the normal for the time of year as the forecast for next few weeks, whilst it does forecast snow it really is not enough to recover the situation, the likelyhood of some of the lower resorts opening at all in the 2022-23 season is sadly looking unlikely. Some resorts have run out of the water supply they need for snow cannons as well, despite collecting it from meltwater and rain that falls.

It is already affecting professional skiing, with the Swiss resort of Adelboden resort planning this weekends Alpine Cup on artificial snow.

Investment in resorts has continued during the disrupted last three years with many new chair lifts and cable cars open, with what will amount to a forth year of disrupted seasons the hope is that that investment will continue, although some of the lower resorts may find it increasingly difficult to find the capital needed, often tens of millions of Euros for a new lift.

We have a weather station in the garden at our house in St Gervais and December was 3C warmer in 2022 than 2021, so far in January it is even worse!

People have been saying for years that resorts below 1000m will struggle increasingly, this year even those in the 1000-2000m range are struggling, to be sure of snow you have to go upto 2000m and then the quality of that snow is sadly questionable.

Ironically the Sierra Nevadas in Spain despite being the most southerly resort in Europe is having a good start to the season so far, by there standards, they are used to patchy snow and typically the quantity of snow picks up towards the end of January, an approach the Alpine resorts might have to get used to. They also have infrastructure to cope with regular patchy snow.

 

 

Global warming is proving itself to be even more of a reality that continues to affect more and peoples livelyhoods at a rate far faster than anyone could have judged. 2022 will for sure once the figures are finalised beat 2016 as the hottest year on record, the top 10 current hottest years on record have all been since 2010. It still baffles me how supposedly rational people can be climate change deniers, the facts are before your eyes, open them. Most of them of course are of a generation who won't have to live with the consequences (led by corrupt liars like hopefully soon to be proved to be a criminal Donald Trump, even the UK equivalent when he was in power didn't subscribe to that theory) so probably don't care either. Whilst I won't have to live with the worst of them, my children will, so be responsible. The world can ill afford yet more pressure on an already downwards economic spiral.