European ski resorts still waiting for snow

MEGEVE, France — Freakish high temperatures and rain revisited this posh ski resort in the French Alps and other mountain areas of Europe last week, prolonging a mild winter that is striking hard at alpine economies and fueling a debate about what is causing the strange weather.

Hundreds of professional ski races in Europe have been canceled or disrupted, including events in Italy, France, Switzerland, Finland and Norway. Italy alone has canceled 104 races this season, including 35 in the first two weeks of January.

Race organizers in Kitzbuhel, Austria, used helicopters last week to dump more than 100,000 cubic feet of snow from higher elevations onto the famed downhill course to save a race from cancellation and stave off a blow to the resort's prestige and economy.

In Megeve, one of France's oldest winter sports towns, vacationers traded skis for umbrellas as temperatures climbed to 45 degrees and rain pelted the mountain from its 7,700-foot summit to the picturesque town square 4,000 feet below.

As last week began, about half the area's 200 ski runs were open, but by Friday, barely a quarter were. On the lower half of the mountain, trails that are normally snowbound by mid-January were still alpine meadows, keeping many would-be skiers away. Mayor Girard Morand said lift revenues were 30 percent lower than a year ago.

"I've never seen it this bad in January," said Michael Vibert, manager of the Savoyard, a 120-seat restaurant that served six dinners Tuesday. "It's hard, but we're not ready to kill ourselves yet. Maybe later. But who knows? Next week it could snow, snow, snow."

The unseasonably mild weather in the Alps is raising concerns here about long-term climate change and its potential effect on skiing.

A recent report by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development warned that a temperature rise of 3.6 degrees in the Alps could lower the number of European ski resorts with "reliable" snow conditions from 600 to 400, with lower-lying areas being particularly vulnerable.

"The years 1994, 2000, 2002 and 2003 were the warmest on record in the Alps in the last 500 years," the report said. "Climate model projections show even greater changes in the coming decades." It cited another report saying that banks in Switzerland were refusing to lend money to resorts below about 4,900 feet.

"If we do nothing now, it will be terrible in 10 years," said Adrien Duvillard, 37, a former downhill racer on the French national team who is Megeve's director of tourism. He said this year's poor snow was clear evidence that global warming was hurting the ski industry, "and if in 20 years we are on the same track, there will be no snow anymore at our altitude."

Britain's national weather service said temperatures in the alpine regions this year were running between seven and 13 degrees Fahrenheit above long-term averages.

In Megeve, the No. 1 sport has been overtaken by a new obsession: snow prognostication. Flurries Friday, maybe Saturday, certainly by Sunday, and on and on, ever since the last snowfall Jan. 4.

But this past Wednesday, what the village got was rain increasing from a drizzle to a downpour and moist clouds and fog hanging overhead. All but a few die-hard skiers shunned the slopes. At the Dany Magnin ski shop, 20 pairs of skis had been rented in three days, about one-tenth the norm. Ski school director Bernard Feige, 44, said he had not booked a single lesson Wednesday for his 380 instructors.

"We are waiting for the snow — it's very stressful," he said.

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