Originally Posted by
Daz80
Less snow that 20-30 years ago, who'd of thought it. Looks like us young generation do actually have it better.
!
I think it's worse
I knew there was less snow on the ground from my own experience. I went looking for supporting evidence to post here since my anecdotes are not strong on their own.
I of course cannot recall how many days of snow we had in any year however I have taken part in several different snow-essential activities over the years.
As a child I went sledging at some point every winter it seemed. It would snow and there would be a week of sledging. Then it was not every year or the snow melted very quickly.
After I started driving I went snow driving on local hill roads in the night every year, then not every year, then almost never due to a lack of snow. What fun.
At a relatively late age I started skiing in Scotland, with good snow cover every year. The snow was fickle, sometimes there was snow in the west, sometimes in the east, but there was almost always snow for skiing in the winter. Within a very few years there was almost no reliable snow. I gave up skiing in Scotland.
I moved my skiing to Europe. Tignes in the French alps was open for skiing 365 days a year on the glacier there. Search for [tignes ski 365 jours par an] and click Translate this page. This season the glacier opened as follows:
29/09/2018: opening of the fall skiing season on the Grande Motte glacier
05/05/2019: closing of Tignes' glacier.[1]
That's about seven months. It's not that there is no demand. People love skiing.
A number of years ago (2005 ish) at Tignes a local guide pointed out a huge cablecar intermediate tower that he explained that his grandfather had worked on constructing. He said that the glacier ice had to be dug away to expose the bedrock for the foundations. As he pointed at it, the glacier was 100ft below the base of the pylon. Looking at a webcam image today it looks as if the glacier is quite a bit more than 100ft below the pylon. See first image below.
At Tignes the glacier is now "preserved" by creating snow trapping trenches. This was not necessary previously. See second image below. Again from a live webcam.
There is a lot less snow round here.
[1]
https://en.tignes.net/what-to-see-do...inter-ski-area
Pylon is near centre of frame. When built the base of the pylon was buried in the glacier by a small amount. The entire outcrop was within the ice of the glacier.
