Yahoo Finance A warm, wet winter is giving Canadian ski resorts a glimpse of an unwanted future
Bad weather and lower revenue underscore need to adapt to climate change
Quebec’s ski areas earn about a third of their winter revenue over spring break, so resort owners were less than pleased by late February forecasts featuring rain and temperatures many degrees higher than normal.
“The timing is really, really bad,” said Yves Juneau, head of the Association des stations de ski du Québec , the province’s ski area association. “We’re used to having a January thaw or some rain. But to have it just before Christmas and then spring break, it’s a double hit that will be hard to cope with.”
Across Canada, the weather story — with El Niño’s outsized influence on temperatures — has been similar, giving Canada’s multi-billion-dollar ski industry an unwanted taste of what the future could hold.
“We don't expect every year going forward to look anything like this,” Dr. Daniel Scott, a scientist at the University of Waterloo, said in an interview with Yahoo Finance Canada. “But it does show us that you don't have to wait till the 2050s to see a winter like this.”
Scott co-authored a study that found U.S. ski resorts suffered around US$5 billion in economic losses because of climate change between 2000 and 2019 and could face losses of US$1 billion annually by mid-century. He says the same factors — higher operating costs due in large part to the need for more snowmaking, and reduced revenue from a shortened season — were in play in Canada, this season especially.
“You see it this year more plainly than you probably have seen it,” he said. “Some people in the U.S. are calling it the Lost Winter.”
Bad weather, worse timing
A good indicator of the unpredictability of ski seasons: last winter was excellent for Canadian resorts. Quebec ski areas saw 6.6 million visitors, the most in 16 years, while western Canada recorded its largest visitor count ever with 10.3 million, according to industry data.
Paul Pinchbeck, who heads the Canadian Ski Council, a national industry group, told Yahoo Finance Canada that this winter has been "less than optimal," but that a bad season isn't an unfamiliar thing for resorts.
"It's not the first time that we have had slow starts and/or early finishes," he said. "But we definitely are focused on ensuring our businesses are as protected as we can be, given the fact that we accept there will be more variability in the weather moving forward."
This year, the weather has not been so friendly. The west coast finally got a snow dump in late February, but back east ski areas have suffered.
Under a high emission future, by mid-century, certain ski areas are going to fall out of the marketplace.Dr. Daniel Scott, University of Waterloo
Last year, Quebec’s ski areas brought in $429 million over the year, with $366 million coming during ski season, Juneau says. “If you look at that, we should basically have generated $120 million for school break time,” he said. “I see we’re probably going to be down 50 per cent.”
Even if this winter is an outlier, the upshot is that rising temperatures will necessitate change. “All ski destinations are going to have to adapt for one reason or another,” said Scott, who notes that eastern Canada’s fate, especially, depends on future emissions reductions.
“If the world achieves the Paris climate agreement [goals], the ski industry resembles much of what it looks like today,” he said. “Under a high-emission future, by mid-century, certain ski areas are going to fall out of the marketplace. There's no question that those who are more climate resilient, however, will be able to gain market share.”
What adaptation looks like
Though snowmaking of course adds operating costs, it is an essential part of modern resort management.
Juneau says Quebec's resorts know they must keep investing, adding and modernizing infrastructure to increase snowmaking coverage.
Around 40 per cent of existing snowmaking equipment in Quebec is due for an upgrade, Juneau estimates. Some machinery is 40 years old, takes hours to reach top efficiency, and requires temperatures of -7 C or lower to operate. “If we were to replace that equipment, we could make snow at -2 C, and at full capacity within an hour,” Juneau said.
Lower revenues due to this season’s poor weather, however, mean resorts won’t have the capital to do all the work that is needed, Juneau says.
(The necessity of snowmaking is a regional thing: Pinchbeck observed that it's much less central to operations at western Canadian resorts.)
Many resorts have also embraced a four-season approach out of necessity, adding golf, mountain biking, conference centres and other elements to attract visitors outside of the ski season. Whistler now gets more visitors during the “green season” than the ski season, Scott says, “so they’ve kind of flipped the script.”
Juneau says Quebec’s resorts will always get the bulk of their revenues from winter traffic, but expanding into summer activities is important for another reason: talent retention.
“If it’s just a winter operation it’s too seasonal,” he said. “The jobs we have now, engineers, environmental consultants, lift mechanics” are in high demand and tough to fill. "If you invest in summer, it makes it a year-round job.”
An assumption in Scott's research is that even adaptation might not save some resorts. Another study in 2019 found that a higher-emission scenario created "the potential for substantial losses of operating ski areas … as early as mid-century."
Perversely, a warming climate may also mean some ski areas actually need to get bigger. “Some places will have to invest further to be able to handle more skiers simply because some of their competitors will leave the marketplace,” Scott said.
