If you are to believe Nobel Prize winner Al Gore, who also received an Academy Award for his documentary about global warming, everyone should immediately sell any ski or snowboard equipment they own and give up their futile search for powder.
To that scenario I say, “Forget it, Al!” All weather is unusual and the snow will show up and everyone will forget all of the doom and gloom of last winter.
How about this Sun Valley, Idaho, snowstorm?
The day before New Years in 1947 the rain pounded down on the roof of our small trailer and woke me up in the parking lot of Sun Valley. It was so warm that it rained all the way up to 8,000 feet at the Round House. When it cleared up it stayed below zero for the next 28 days and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It got way down to 39 below zero for two of those days. If that happened this winter, Al Gore would say, “That warm storm was because of too many emissions from automobiles.” I don’t think so. We did, however, have to ride down on the Exhibition and River Run ski lift for almost a month because offset edges had not yet been invented. Snow conditions are what fell out of the sky and skiing was the way it was …
After many years of traveling the world, everywhere I’ve filmed the weather was always unusual. Do I think the unusual weather conditions during the last decade are based solely on internal combustion engines?
A resounding, “No!”
When Greenland was first visited many years before Columbus accidentally drifted into the Caribbean, Greenland had already been inhabited, farmed and named Greenland because it was totally green. Otherwise they would have named it Iceland. There are dozens of things besides internal combustion engines that affect the weather. For example: In about 1940 an American oceanographer discovered how to predict European weather as long as six months in advance. He was even able to predict what the weather would be like for the invasion of France during World War II.
His theory: The weather in Europe during the winter is greatly controlled by the temperature of the water in the Gulf of Mexico the summer before. The warm water flows out of the gulf and becomes the Gulf stream where it goes north, finally curving east and collides with cold artic air. How warm it is radiates and causes the atmosphere to warm up according to the temperature differential. This raises or lowers the snow level when the storms swing south and begin to hit the ski resorts of Europe.
If my hypothesis is correct, the same thing can be said for West Coast winter weather. It is dependent on how warm the Sea of Japan gets during the summer before. If it was above average the snow level will rise because the Japanese current that goes north and is diverted by the Aleutian Islands to go south and controls West Coast weather.
Last summer was one of the coldest on record because the Japanese current was unusually cold. (This Japanese current theory is one of my own and subject to more investigation.)
On Oct. 23, 2007, I talked with Mike Wiegle in Blue River, British Columbia, and he already had 9 feet of snow up where he lands his helicopters so that you can ski down.
Arapahoe Basin, Colo., had the earliest opening in its history. It was very crowded on opening day in early October so a lot of people were able to make turns and wreck their skis and snowboards on 10 inches of snow with occasional 11-inch rocks.
There are many other factors besides Al Gore that affect the overall temperature of our planet. Of great significance are solar flares and cosmic radiation. One solar flare explosion can be the equivalent of several dozen atomic bomb blasts. When the radiation collides with the earth’s atmosphere, it causes more clouds to form and they lower the overall temperature.
So put all of this information together and chances are you will be making your winter reservations at the same time based on when we had them last year. Scientific evidence relating to potential snow conditions is completely irrelevant to your winter vacation plans.
So get out in the garage and tune up whatever you will be riding on this winter, get your body in shape and try not to get freaked out by Nobel Prize-winner Al Gore. Even though he invented e-mail and the science of global warming in the office of his air-conditioned, 22-room home. That is fortunately a very long way from any ski resort. Or, at least, a short flight in his private jet.
For more stories and stuff from Warren e-mail him at www.warrenmiller.net