A customer discussing the current trail conditions began by saying, "I figured we were all set." He went on to say, "You'd think three feet of snow would do it."
You would only think that if you either hadn't been living in New England for very long, or hadn't been paying close attention for many years.
I moved here as an eager addict of winter mountain exploration. Summers were nice, but the real interest lay in the months governed by snow and ice. Having only lived in New England for three years of my childhood, in the mid 1960s, I had the usual outsider's impression that the place was close kin to the Arctic. The New England ski industry does its best to foster that illusion. Centuries of legend dating back to a period known as the Little Ice Age shaped the myth of New England. There was some truth to them for a couple of centuries, but various natural and man-made influences on climate have really undermined it in the past couple of decades.
Anyone who was here in New Hampshire in January, 1995, should remember what it was like to see an entire early winter's worth of snowpack vanish not only from the foothills and valleys but from the high peaks as well. Several days and nights of unseasonable warm temperatures, accompanied by heavy rain, turned the calendar back to November. Since that time we have seen similar, slightly less dramatic examples of the truth about New England's vulnerability to its actual latitude. Most of the region sits below the 45th Parallel, which marks the halfway point between the equator and the North Pole. Central New Hampshire sits at the same latitude as the south of France. The south of France is warmed by the Mediterranean, and sits close to the Atlantic coast of Europe, so it receives warming influences from both of those water bodies. If you look at North America, parts of the west coast that sit north of New England's latitude have a much warmer climate because of the influence of the Pacific Ocean. Even during the Pleistocene glaciation -- the Ice Age -- the western part of North America was ice-free all the way up to Alaska. Weather be weird.
As a lover of snow, I went through agonies in my early years here, waiting for the snow each winter, and watching the whims of weather take it away, or at least put it through temperature swings that turned it from passably soft to terrifyingly frozen in less than 24 hours. Hard-core skiers with the budget to do so will simply leave. They go to where powder is the norm. This conjures up all sorts of ethical questions regarding where your money comes from, and what are the environmental effects of unnecessary travel. Po' folks like me stay here and do what we can with what nature provides or inflicts.
The pandemic brought an influx of people who might only know the place in summer mode. Many of them appear to bring with them the myth that the place will freeze solid and remain so until the glaciers retreat in late March or April. When was that true? The cliche about New England weather -- if you don't like it, wait a minute -- applies completely to the vagaries of winter. It's even more true with the changing climate bringing extremes like three feet of powder, followed in less than ten days by a deluge of warm rain that obliterates it entirely.
I do remember, just within my 33 years here, that the lakes used to freeze pretty reliably, but as early as the mid-1990s we saw years when the big lakes nearby -- Winnipesaukee and Sebago -- were open patches of startling blue in the white landscape of a winter cold enough to bring snow, but not cold enough to freeze deeper water bodies. Snowmobilers perfected their skimming techniques to the point where no one really watched anymore. They were just like winter jet skis churning up the bay in what had formerly seemed like an impossible feat.
On our groomed network, the groomer has managed to scrape up about three kilometers on what we call the Super Loop, a trail section with a very smooth and well-drained surface improved for summer use by sedate path bikes. Even there the frozen accumulation of snow and sleet is not deep enough to set a classic track. It's just combed out flat. The rest of the trail system is less refined, requiring deeper snow for the machine to get around. And the ungroomed wilds are full of obstacles, suitable only for hiking rather than skiing. We need to give it time and hope that winter delivers better conditions before it finally gives way to the raw, wet season we call springtime.
Welcome to New England.
