For most of US, snow could become a thing of the past

Mark Gongloff, Tribune News Service

If you’re like me and look forward to snow about as much as you look forward to outpatient surgery, then recent winters have been almost blissful in the US. Some of us on the East Coast haven’t seen any serious snowfall in nearly two years. This is, contrary to my personal feelings, not good. Yes, warmer winters and fewer snowstorms mean fewer deaths from cold and less need to burn fossil fuels to heat homes. But robust winter weather provides many benefits for humanity, upsides that are disappearing as the climate changes and the planet warms.

Winter storms like the one that blanketed parts of the Northeast in snow this weekend will keep happening but less frequently. The long-term trend, especially in the normally colder parts of the US and other countries, is one of warmer winters with less of the white stuff.

Why does snow matter? For one thing, people pay good money to play in it for some reason, generating billions of dollars in economic activity. Its melting provides water for drinking and agriculture in summer months when it’s needed most. A cold, snowy winter keeps mosquitoes and other dangerous bugs in check while keeping some other plants and animals alive. It shortens the pollen season for allergy sufferers. Snow protects winter crops, and cold helps fruit and nut trees.

Meanwhile, a hotter planet means more air conditioning in the other seasons, offsetting some of the benefit of less heating in the winter.

Snow has been scarce in the US lately. Aside from the blizzard that swept the Plains and Midwest around Christmas, snarling travel, most of the country has been well below snowfall averages for this time of year, according to the National Weather Service. Only about a fifth of the country was covered in snow before this weekend’s storm, the lowest in more than a decade. Snowpack in California’s Sierra Nevada mountains, which provides up to a third of the state’s water supply, was near record lows at the start of January. Storms brought some relief last week but only raised snowpack across the state to about a third of the average for this point in the season.

On the Great Lakes, ice cover last week was the lowest in at least 50 years. There was basically no ice on the lakes, compared with the long-term average of about 9% coverage:

In the Northeast, torrential December downpours brought flooding and ruined business at ski resorts. Though parts of New York State were slammed with heavy snow this weekend, the storm skirted New York City, meaning it has now gone 694 days without at least 1 inch of snowfall, a record snow drought. Baltimore, Philadelphia and Washington, DC, have gone more than 700 days without. Adding insult to injury, New York missed out on a white Christmas for the 14th consecutive year, a record since at least the 1950s.

Of course, it’s still only early January. There are nearly two more months of “meteorological” winter, which begins on Dec. 1, to go. There’s plenty of snow in the near-term forecast. (Although, first, the Eastern US must brace for yet another massive rainstorm later this week.)

And weather is always chaotic. Mild winters happened long before humans started warping the climate by burning fossil fuels. El Niño weather patterns in the East Pacific tend to raise temperatures in much of the US. With a strong El Niño underway right now, this winter was already expected to be a bust for much of the Northern Hemisphere, though we could still get blasted by a “polar vortex” or two before it’s all over.

But consider the long-term trends, and the effects of a heating planet are clearer. In all but seven of 240 US cities studied by the nonprofit group Climate Central, average winter temperatures have risen since 1970 by an average of 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit. Winter has warmed more in colder regions, with the biggest changes happening in the Upper Midwest (4.7F), the Northeast and Alaska (both 4.6F). And for most of the country, winter is warming faster than any other season.

The effect this has on snowfall is complicated. Ice-free water in the Great Lakes may cause the Midwest to suffer heavier “lake effect” snowstorms, for example. But, again, the overall national trend is of shorter snow seasons, less snowfall and snowpack, thawing Alaskan permafrost and a higher percentage of winter precipitation falling as rain. People are starting to complain of “solastalgia.”

This is an issue throughout the Northern Hemisphere. Canadians experienced record warmth and rainfall in December. The UK, amid its own long-term winter warming trend, suffered heavy rains and flooding last week. Europe’s freakishly warm start to the new year is “the most extreme event ever seen in European climatology,” according to one researcher. (Until next year’s most extreme climatological event ever, anyway.) At least Europe’s warm winter means it’s burning less natural gas for heating, my colleague Javier Blas notes. But Siberia’s thawing permafrost is unleashing planet-warming methane and ancient diseases.

At the rate we’re cooking the planet, this is all just a taste of what’s to come. The best thing we can do now is turn off the oven. As that’s unlikely any time soon, scientists and policymakers should be busy adapting to the headaches that shrinking winters and snowfall will bring — the agricultural impacts, longer allergy seasons, resilient pests, water shortages, lost economic activity and more. Whatever our feelings about the season in the past, there is no doubt we’ll miss it when it’s gone.