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Counting Blessings and Praying for Snow

Mother Nature is often unpredictable, but she’s been especially weird this year

By Kellyn Brown

They’re jumping out of windows in Boston, prompting the mayor to tell them to settle down. New England has compiled so much snow that residents are apparently stir crazy.

“I’m asking people to stop their nonsense right now,” Boston Mayor Marty Walsh said earlier this month. “These are adults jumping out windows. It’s a foolish thing to do, and you could kill yourself.”

But they’re not listening. They continue to post videos online of themselves diving into giant snowdrifts. That’s what the snowiest month on record will do to a city. As I write this, more snow is in Boston’s forecast, which could add to the 8 feet that has already fallen.

In much of New England, this season has been especially brutal, but other parts of the country have also suffered. Last week, Cleveland set a record when the temperature dropped to negative 17 degrees. Chicago’s frigid air set a new low – which had stood for 79 years – when the temperature dipped to minus 8 degrees. Even parts of the South are seeing snow.

Meanwhile, on a recent weekend I traveled to Fairmont Hot Springs near Anaconda for a wedding. After an hour of basking my exceptionally fare skin in the sun, I feared it would burn. In February. In Montana.

Mother Nature is often unpredictable, but she’s been especially weird this year – leaving skiers in the West wondering what happened. While winter storms such as “Quantum” and “Linus” (yes, the Weather Channel has begun naming them) have taken aim at the Northeast and South, some regional ski resorts, such as Turner Mountain near Libby, have closed.

Still, we should count our blessings. Whitefish Mountain Resort and Blacktail Mountain have good coverage and are 100 percent open even as consistent snowfall has been sporadic. It could be worse. Way worse.

Washington state is experiencing the worst ski season many there can remember. Mount Spokane – the mountain where I spent many of my childhood weekends – is closed waiting for snow in what is its second shortest season in 25 years. So are Snoqualmie and 49 Degrees North. Other mountains, such as Mount Baker, have limited operations as some friends of mine found out the hard way when they headed west for a birthday ski trip but never skied.

The sparse snow has had a trickle-down effect on some mountain economies. The Bellingham Herald recently reported that the lack of snowfall has hurt the foothill communities of Mount Baker, quoting a local who said, “If March doesn’t get (much snow), I think it will be quite concerning.”

If Washington is bad, California is awful – only because it’s been dealing with sparse snow for four straight years due to extreme drought. Several mid-sized mountains have closed again and even larger resorts with snowmaking equipment are struggling to stay open.

Tim Cohee, owner of China Peak Mountain Resort, recently told the Associated Press, “Name a business that could go through four years of this. I’ve seen a couple wimpy years before, but nothing like this – nothing even close.”

But this year the gloom has spread, reaching into parts of Canada. Mount Washington on Vancouver Island in British Columbia is closed. So is Castle Mountain near Pincher Creek, Alberta.

Meanwhile, skiers are flocking to resorts in the northeast and even West Virginia. One ski center in Massachusetts actually had to temporarily close because it had too much snow.

Again, we should count our blessings. Our largest local mountains are open and attracting skiers in the West living next to bare mountains. But heading into March, I’m praying that some of the snow New Englanders are jumping into out their windows will head this direction.