A snowless future foretold on europe’s tawny slopes

CLIMATE

WHEN FELLOW SKIERS SENT AMADEO REALE PHOTOS OF churned mud and grassy slopes at their French and Swiss ski resorts in January, he shuddered in sympathy, but felt no sense of foreboding. As the president of Cortina d’Ampezzo’s historic Sci Club 18, he is confident that Italy’s premier ski resort in the Dolomites is pretty much immune to the no-snow-pocalypse that emptied out Europe’s prime ski destinations over the winter holidays. After all, most European resorts are 900 to 1,000 m (2,952 to 3,280 ft.) above sea level. Cortina d’Ampezzo starts at 1,600 m (5,249 ft.) and ascends to 2,362 m (7,749 ft.). Even if the lower slopes get a little slushy from above-average temperatures, as they did in mid-January, well, there is always manufactured snow—after five days of low temperatures and steady efforts by the resort’s snow cannons, the slopes were back in perfect condition, says Reale.

In February 2026 Cortina d’Ampezzo will host the Winter Olympics’ downhill events, and Reale is confident that there will be plenty of snow (man-made or natural), and enough cold weather, to make it stick. But artificial snow is only a stopgap solution, and an expensive one at that. Snow cannons work only at freezing temperatures or below. “The only thing we are scared of is having one or two months of hot weather,” he says, which is unlikely at the resort’s elevation, at least for the near future.

Over the winter holidays, though, most of Europe’s resorts got a taste of that much warmer future—the Swiss resort of Gstaad ended up flying in snow by helicopter from elsewhere in Switzerland when temperatures hit 20°C (68°F) in early January. It’s not the first time Europe’s ski resorts have been without snow, but it’s the first time that snow cannons, at least since they were first deployed in the ’80s, couldn’t make up for the shortfall because of high temperatures. This drove home the reality of winter without snow to resorts and skiers alike.

WINTER SPORTS HAVE BECOME a major economic engine for alpine villages that have pinned their fortunes on regular snow and the skiers who seek it out every year, spending hundreds of dollars a day on lift fees, hotels, restaurants, and equipment rentals. When there is no snow, there are no tourists, and no income. Rolando Galli says that his ski-lift operation, in the Italian Apennines resort of Abetone, is down €2 million ($2.15 million) compared with this time last year, because of a lack of snow this sea