It was 55 degrees and bright Thursday at Sugar Bowl Resort, where the first day of the season of the 2021 ski season — currently deferred due to warm climate — was as yet recorded as “TBD.”
“Winter hasn’t exactly shown up in Tahoe yet,” authorities wrote in a note about the delay. “The group will be working daily and prepared to flip the switch when Mother Nature cooperates.”
However, the mountain isn’t the main spot feeling the squeeze from absence of snow. Another review drove by specialists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that diminishing snowpack across California and the western United States could recoil drastically more — or sometimes vanish — before the century’s end.
The study, published recently in the journal Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, paints a worrisome picture of the “potentially catastrophic consequences” of a future with less snow, including the massive implications it holds for California’s water supply, as well as rippling effects on soil, plants, wildlife and even the increased frequency of wildfire.