Swiss Ski Season Worst In 100+ Years Of Records; Visits Down 25%, Season 1 Month Shorter Than 70s
For the third year in a row, the search for Alpine snow is on. An ultra-dry December marred the start of the ski season in the mountainous heart of Europe, which draws millions expecting Instagram-ready white peaks and pretty villages. A colder January is improving conditions, but the unpredictable early winter weather cut ticket sales at resorts and confounded holiday planning.
“The general discussion in the office after Christmas has been about lack of snow,” said Mark Dowding, portfolio manager at Bluebay Asset Management LLP in London, who’s been checking snow bulletins frantically ahead of a planned February trip to Austria. “There is an understanding now that Christmas is just not the right time to go skiing.”
After precocious storms in November raised false hopes across the Alps, December produced the least snow in Switzerland since record-keeping began more than 100 years ago. The Jungfrau ski region, around the resort villages of Wengen and Grindelwald, suffered a 25 percent drop in visits from the start of the season through Jan. 2, according to co-owner Jungfraubahnen Holding AG.
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“You can’t expect things to be the same as they are now in 50 years’ time,” said Reto Knutti, a professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology’s Institute for Atmospheric and Climate Studies, who estimates that by the end of this century the snowfall line could be 500 meters to 700 meters higher than today, with the length of time there’s snow on the ground between four and eight weeks shorter. “Winter days where at locations below 3,000 meters it just pours rain—that’ll be more frequent.”
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https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-10/how-much-snow-is-there-in-the-alps-this-year-for-skiing
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