Unusual warmth in Europe forces thousands of ski resorts to shut down
Skiers at the Morzine ski resort in the French Alps had to make do with grass and slushy snow due to the unseasonably mild weather and rain.
Europe has endured a stretch of staggering warmth since the end of 2022 that has left ski slopes that are typically bustling with winter sports enthusiasts barren with more patches of grass than snow. AccuWeather meteorologists say the mild weather will be in no hurry to leave, at least in the near future.
Ski resorts in the northern Alps and French Pyrenees have been particularly hit hard with a lack of snow, especially those that lie in the lower altitudes, according to The Independent, a British online newspaper. One resort near France's border with Andorra has shut down completely, while two others in the Portes du Soleil ski area are partially closed.
“There literally is no snow this year,” Christine Harrison, a long-time visitor of a small ski resort in the French Alps, told CNN.
The Patscherkofel winter sport resort near Innsbruck, Austria, is pictured on Monday, Jan. 2, 2023. Sparse snowfall and unseasonably warm weather in much of Europe is allowing green grass to blanket many mountaintops across the region where snow might normally be. It has caused headaches for ski slope operators and aficionados of Alpine white this time of year. (AP Photo/Matthias Schrader)
Rain and persistently warm conditions since last week are to blame for the lack of snow that has shut down half of France's 7,500 ski slopes.
In Switzerland, the Adelboden ski report which is set to host the skiing World Cup this weekend will run the event on artificial snow, according to The Independent.
New Year's Day marked the warmest January day on record for many countries across Europe, including the Netherlands, Poland, Czechia, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia and Denmark.
The mild weather to start 2023 followed what was the warmest December in more than two decades in France, according to Météo-France, the country's meteorological service.
AccuWeather meteorologists expect mild weather and minimal amounts of snow to be common themes across the region over the next couple of weeks.
"The warmth is going to continue through the middle of the month but [it won't be] as extreme as the start of the year," Tyler Roys, a senior meteorologist at AccuWeather and expert on European weather forecasting, said.
Any threat of snow in the higher terrain does not look likely until next week at the earliest, according to Roys.
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