If you were planning on skiing in Verbier this year, you may need to think again. A heatwave means many resorts can’t even make artificial snow.
It’s January and a forlorn ribbon of artificial snow, flanked by verdant pastureland, is all that links the Swiss village of Gstaad, altitude 1050 meters, with the ski resort’s uppermost reaches.
Capping the hottest year on record for France, New Year’s Eve saw overnight lows of 11 degrees, the mildest average nocturnal temperatures across the country since records began in 1947. Switzerland is warming twice as fast as the global average, suffering a roughly 2 Celsius rise in temperatures over the past 150 years.By the end of this century, warns the Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research, only resorts above 2500 meters will get enough natural snow to stay in business.
Gstaad, long a playground for the rich, can always fall back on tourists who want to walk in the mountains rather than go hunting for powder. And the big, high-altitude resorts that lure British or Scandinavian skiers who booked months in advance are doing just fine. It’s not just that the skiing is less reliable over the crucially lucrative Christmas break. Skiing seasons are getting shorter and shorter every year. In St Moritz, which sits at about 1800 meters, the season opened in mid-October and ran till the end of May less than a decade ago.
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