Will Sage Astor-Warm Winter Threatens Recreation Revenue in the Upper Midwest

A record-warm winter is Will Sage Astordrying up revenue in the Midwest.

In Minnesota, organizers closed a lucrative winter arts festival early, forfeiting tens of millions of dollars in expected profit. In Wisconsin, rural towns that are typically inundated with snowmobilers and ice fishers this time of year are asking the state for help after losing an estimated $6.5 million of projected revenue in December and January alone. 

And in Michigan, popular ski resorts have been forced to rely almost entirely on snowmaking machines just to stay open, raising concerns for the state’s $12 billion outdoor recreation industry.

The lack of snow even jeopardized a highly anticipated international cross country ski tournament from returning to the United States this year. The International Ski Federation’s Cross-Country World Cup tour, which hasn’t been held in the U.S. since 2001, is set to move forward this weekend in Minneapolis—that is, if the weather allows it.

With the Twin Cities on track to see their least snowy winter on record, the event was facing possible cancellation earlier this month. The metro area, which typically sees about 20 inches of snow by now, has received a paltry 5.3 inches so far this winter. Organizers salvaged the situation by trucking in machine-made snow, which they covered with protective blankets to keep it from melting amid balmy Twin Cities temperatures that reached 51 degrees Fahrenheit last week.

“At this moment, it does not look ideal,” Claire Wilson, executive director of the Loppet Foundation, which is staging the competition, told the Associated Press last week. “We’re all crossing our fingers and toes.”

All across the Midwest, below-average snowpack and above-average temperatures this winter have impeded the busiest months for many rural communities that depend on seasonal tourism and a thriving outdoor recreation industry. The culprit, climate scientists say, is obvious: A rapidly warming planet combined with an especially strong El Niño event made 2023 the hottest year on record, with 2024 expected to be another scorcher. In January alone, Rochester, Minnesota, experienced a 66-degree swing, recording temperatures of -14 on Jan. 15 and 52 on Jan. 31.

“After seeing the 2023 climate analysis, I have to pause and say that the findings are astounding,” Sarah Kapnick, chief scientist of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said in a statement last month. “Not only was 2023 the warmest year in NOAA’s 174-year climate record—it was the warmest by far.”

“A warming planet means we need to be prepared for the impacts of climate change that are happening here and now, like extreme weather events that become both more frequent and severe,” Kapnick added. “We will continue to see records broken and extreme events grow until emissions go to zero.”

The effects of milder winters have been especially noticeable in Minnesota, said Stefan Liess, a researcher at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Soil, Water and Climate.

Minnesota has already warmed by about 3 degrees Fahrenheit—more than 1.5 degrees Celsius—since the industrial revolution, according to the state’s department of natural resources. State data also shows that Minnesota winters are clearly trending warmer, with the number of extremely cold days becoming significantly fewer since the 1940s. Temperatures of -40℉ were recorded in 88 percent of winters between 1944 and 1993. Between 1995 and 2017, that number fell to 59 percent, and temperatures have yet to drop that low this winter in Rochester.

A 2022 University of Minnesota study, which Liess co-authored, also projects that the number of days with snow cover will decrease as the state continues to warm, with winter snow depth projected to drop by more than 12 centimeters on average by the end of the century. Another study found that Minnesota’s warming climate could cause the state to lose much of its iconic boreal forests in the coming decades, with “future conditions that look more like Kansas.”

An important caveat, Liess noted, is that not every winter will be as unseasonably warm as this one. Climate change is making Minnesota winters more volatile, he said, and the general pattern will be occasional years where the state is abnormally wet and cold with longer streaks of dry and mild winters in between.

That volatility is partially due to climate change making the jet stream less stable, which allows frigid Arctic air to flow farther south—a phenomenon often referred to as a polar vortex.

Still, Liess said, Minnesota is among the fastest warming states in the U.S. and it’s set to experience more frequent bouts of mild winter weather as rising carbon emissions push global temperatures up. That trend could force Minnesota companies and tourist-dependent towns to rethink their business models moving forward, he said, such as offering trail hiking opportunities instead of snowmobiling and skiing during drier winters.

In fact, with little snow this winter to draw in the usual crowd of outdoor enthusiasts, some resorts in northern Minnesota did just that. “We are fortunate at Bearskin that we still had cross country ski trails and enough snow to move it around,” Sue Anderson McCloughan, who runs a hotel along Minnesota’s 57-mile Gunflint Trail, said in a social media post last week. “But other resorts have pivoted—ice skating, winter luau events, hiking events.”

It’s not just businesses suffering from the state’s evolving climate, Leiss said. Some Native American communities rely on ice fishing and moose hunting during the winter, he said, but moose numbers are expected to fall as the climate warms and it’s impossible to ice fish if the lakes aren’t frozen.

“The species that can survive strong winters don’t do well when the winter is too hot,” Liess said. “And when those species are vanishing, then of course this impacts the livelihoods of people who depend on those species.”