Ski Season in the Rearview

Introduction

Ski season in the Roaring Fork Watershed began with a bang—and ended with a whimper. On November 26th, at the start of our ski season, we were fortunate enough to receive the third-largest single-day precipitation event on record, with 35.77 mm of precipitation. Through winter, our snowpack was near average—until late March, when it plummeted into one of the lowest levels on record. The last time the snowpack was lower (as measured by SNOTEL data) at this point in the season was in 2012, which marked our worst snowpack on record. In this article, we take a closer look at what drove this dramatic shift—and what it could mean for the season ahead.

As the chart below shows, our snowpack peaked early and began to rapidly decline after March 24th. Below we take a closer look the conditions over the course of the ski season (November – April) that have led us to this point.

Temperature

Average daily temperature this ski season was 0.3°C cooler than the 1980–2025 average. Over this period, average daily temperatures during the ski season have slightly increased. Overall, this is consistent with recent warming trends in the Roaring Fork Watershed, with winter (December, January, February) warming being the least significant of the seasonal warming patterns.

While average temperatures are helpful for an overview, they only tell part of the story. Changes in daily minimum temperature and daily maximum temperature show a more complicated picture. This ski season, the average daily minimum temperature was 0.83°C warmer than the 1980–2025 average, and the average daily maximum temperature was 0.98°C cooler.

If we look at historic data for maximum and minimum daily temperatures, we see that this is part of a longer-term trend: ski season daily maximum temperatures have changed very little, while daily minimum temperatures have been steadily increasing.

This discrepancy is potentially connected to a phenomenon known as elevation-dependent warming (EDW). EDW is a blanket term used to describe how climate change is impacting higher elevations in different ways than nearby lower-elevation areas. There is evidence that higher elevations are warming faster than lower elevations, and that nighttime lows are increasing at a faster rate than daily highs.

Practically, this has a number of impacts. From the perspective of snowpack, the most consequential is the potential for faster melting. When overnight lows are above 0°C and the snowpack doesn’t freeze, it becomes isothermal (with snow temperatures measuring 0°C throughout the entire snowpack). At this point, melt-off happens much more rapidly. When overnight lows increase, this can happen earlier in the season, leading to an earlier loss of snowpack.

Precipitation

November was a strong start to the ski season and the only month to record above-average precipitation. We finished the season 3.11 mm below average, and only six other ski seasons since 1980 had lower levels of precipitation (recently, 2012 and 2021 were both lower).

Between 1980–2025, there appears to be a trend toward decreasing precipitation during the ski season, but the data is very noisy and the trend is not what scientists would call significant.

If we expand our temporal window and look at winter precipitation from 1896–2024, the trend we see between 1980–2025 goes away.

Looking Forward

Currently, our snowpack is at 58% of the median. While nothing in the future is certain, this increases the probability that we’ll be in a drought this summer, which in turn raises the likelihood of extreme wildfires.

We can look at several recent years where our snowpack was at similar levels. In 2015, snowpack was almost the exact same level. May precipitation ended up significantly above average, resulting in a later-than-average melt-off date. In 2018, we saw a very different outcome: once again, snowpack was at a similar level, but unlike 2015, May in 2018 was dry and temperatures were above average. Snowpack rapidly declined, and we moved into extreme drought, which facilitated the spread of the Lake Christine Fire. We’ll continue tracking conditions through the summer as we monitor drought and fire risk.