Since "Dramatic Step-Like Drop" In Alps' Snowfall Levels In 1980s, No Recovery For Region - AFP

A forthcoming study has added to worries that the Alpine ski industry will be badly affected by global warming, the British weekly New Scientist reports on Wednesday. A "dramatic step-like drop" in the amount of snow falling in the western European mountain chain occurred in the late 1980s and since then snowfall has never recovered, it says.

The evidence has been compiled by researcher Christoph Marty at the Swiss Federal Institute for Snow and Avalanche Research. Previous data have suggested that Alpine snowfall has been affected by rising temperatures, particularly at lower-altitude resorts where snow-making machines are now widely deployed.

Marty casts a wider net, though, spanning snowfall trends over 60 years from 34 weather stations between 200 and 1,800 metres (650 and 6,300 feet) above sea level. The last 10 years of data are new and until now have not been analysed

The average number of snow days over the last 20 winters is lower than at any time since records began more than 100 years ago, and in some years the amount that fell was 60 percent lower than was typical in the early 1980s, Marty found.

EDIT

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Alps_hit_by_two-decade_decline_in_snowfall_999.html

That should give us another decade or so of riding.

Pretty soon we will have to go to Alaska to ride.

This was an awesome season in Colorado, but it started very late. It was not until mid December that we could ride real snow.