B**W
发帖数: 2273 | 1 With snow scarce, northern US has brown Christmas
December 23, 2011
By JOHN FLESHER
Associated Press
TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — Dreams of a white Christmas are hanging by a
thread in the North, where unusually mild weather has left the ground bare
in many places — a welcome reprieve for people who don't like shoveling,
but a lump of coal in the stockings of outdoor sports buffs who miss their
winter wonderland.
From New England to the Dakotas and even parts of the Northern Rockies and
Pacific Northwest, snowfall has been well below normal through the fall and
early winter with cold air bottled up over Canada. Golf courses were open
this week in Minneapolis, which a year ago was digging out from a storm that
dumped more than 17 inches of snow and collapsed the Metrodome roof. Many
downhill ski resorts are making snow to compensate for nature's stinginess.
"It's been an amazingly slow start to the winter for everybody," said Mike
Boguth, a National Weather Service forecaster in Gaylord, Mich., a resort
town that has had only about 2 inches of natural snow this year.
La Nina, the cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that affects weather
worldwide, has nudged the jet stream farther north. Air pressure over the
northern Atlantic has steered storm systems away from the East Coast.
The trends have resulted in the least snow New England has seen in November
and December since the late 1990s, said Eric Evenson, a weather service
meteorologist in Burlington, Vt. Snow totals across the region are 4 to 14
inches below normal, he said.
Williston, N.D., where more than 5 inches would have accumulated by now in a
typical December, has gotten nothing. A couple of inches fell farther south
in Bismarck but melted. Montana's mountain snowpack is about 30 percent
below average. Ski resorts in Washington state have gotten little snow since
Thanksgiving.
Even snowy Michigan is feeling the pinch. Parts of the state regularly get
more than 100 inches a year as clouds suck up moisture from the Great Lakes
and deposit it over land. It's been sparse this year, although light snow
fell Friday and forecasters said sections of Michigan, Wisconsin and
Minnesota might get the 1 inch required to qualify as a white Christmas.
Light flurries and temperatures around 30 degrees are expected Christmas Day
in Green Bay, Wis., where the Packers will host the Chicago Bears. That's
downright balmy for Lambeau Field, the notorious "frozen tundra" that has
hosted a fair share of NFL games in bitter cold and pelting snow.
A storm system moving up from the Gulf coast may sprinkle up to 3 inches of
snow in sections of the Northeast by Christmas, but it probably won't last
long, Evenson said.
Along with painting the landscape in dreary shades of brown and gray instead
of the usual white, the abnormally mild winter has affected the economy.
Local governments have spent less on plowing and salting roads. Gogebic
County, in the snow belt of Michigan's Upper Peninsula, is about $100,000
better off than at this time a year ago, although road commission manager
Darren Pionk said the savings might be short-lived.
"One or two bad months, and it can disappear pretty quickly," he said.
Some businesses geared toward the winter are having a hard time. Mike Pobuda
of Empire, Mich., keeps busy plowing residential and commercial driveways
in a typical winter. These days, the phone isn't ringing. He's working at a
convenience store to help pay the bills.
"It was already tight out there and now it's tighter," Pobuda said.
In Sioux Falls, S.D., hardware store owner Dallas Vanden Bos said it's taken
all season to sell as many bags of snow and ice melting materials as
customers usually buy in one day.
The outdoor recreation industry is making the best of things. Sugarbush
Resort in Warren, Vt., installed about 40 high-efficiency snowmaking
machines this year and immediately put them to work making 18 of the
property's 111 trails suitable for skiing and snowboarding, president and
majority owner Win Smith said.
But smaller operations that can't afford snowmaking may suffer if the snow
shortage lasts much longer, said Lisa Marshall, spokeswoman for the
Wisconsin Department of Tourism.
"It could be make-or-break for them," she said.
Not everyone regrets that snow has been mostly a no-show, especially people
who hate driving on slick roads and shoveling walks and driveways.
In Minneapolis, more than 100 people braved borderline freezing temperatures
this week for a rare opportunity to play golf in December. Mike Schneider,
a 70-year-old retiree, carried a handful of tees he had whittled to needle-
sharp points so they would penetrate the frosty turf at Parkview Golf Club.
A fellow golfer, Jim Jorgensen, said there were advantages to playing in the
cold. For one thing, freezing eliminates water hazards.
"It just skips across," Jorgensen said. "You don't have to worry about
losing the ball."
— — —
Associated Press writers Kristi Eaton and Amber Hunt in Sioux Falls, S.D.;
David Gram in Montpelier, Vt.; Dinesh Ramde in Milwaukee; and Chris Williams
in Minneapolis contributed to this report. (Copyright 2011 by The
Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) |
|
