It might be the middle of summer, but right now a ski resort in the state is already in the midst of a major plan to help keep snow on the slopes this winter.
It’s not an easy task and a new study is out showing --- like many of us have been feeling --- winters are not the same as years ago.
For folks who grew up in Connecticut, chilly memories seem to be thawing these days.
“I’ve noticed there’s been less snow,” said Tinika Stokes of Windsor.
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“The winter is not winter. One day it’s warm, one day it’s mild, the next day it’s freezing,” said Sherry Mansfield of Hartford.
Now there’s a study to back it up.
“It's that winter average that is changing dramatically in Connecticut,” said Stephen Young, a Salem State University professor.
Young studied snow cover around the world using satellite data from 2000 to now. And something in our area – from Pennsylvania to Southern New England - stood out.
“There's nowhere else in the continent that is melting as fast as we are. And also relative to the globe as a whole, we're melting faster than 95% of the rest of the world that is melting,” Young said.
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Over the past two decades in Connecticut, he discovered days with snow cover on average dropped in half, from 62 days to 31.
Even as snow piles up with bigger storms, the professor says the powder is disappearing quickly because temperatures are warming.
“Here in Connecticut we’ve lost the ability to get the temperatures to make enough snow to last the season,” said Sean Hayes, Powder Ridge Mountain Park and Resort CEO.
At Powder Ridge Mountain Park in Middlefield, Hayes showed us his new plan to fight back with a massive snow making factory which can run no matter the temperature.
“We will be able to put down every day over six inches of snow over the equivalent of a football field,” Hayes said.
Besides investing $1.5 million in the factory and other snow making equipment this season, Hayes says the other part of the strategy has been to turn this into a year-round park.
“From the get go we knew you couldn’t rely on a winter only business,” Hayes said.
A lot of people might not miss the hassles that come with snow. But snow cover helps reflect the sun’s energy and without it the Earth warms even more.
The professor expects the warming and loss of snow cover trend to continue unless solutions are taken seriously to combat greenhouse gases.
