Understanding the Colorado Snow Drought Impact
The base depth sign at Breckenridge reads 38 inches on January 15, 2026. On a normal year, by mid-January, that number would approach 60. The difference isn’t academic. It’s visible in the closed terrain on the trail map, in the rocks poking through coverage on runs that should be buried, in the constant thrum of snowmaking guns working overtime to patch what nature hasn’t provided. The parking lots tell their own story. Where cars should be stacked in orderly rows stretching toward the horizon, there are gaps. Whole sections sit empty under a bluebird sky that, in another season, would have skiers celebrating powder days.
Vail Resorts reported the numbers on January 15. Through the first months of the season, skier visits across their North American properties dropped 20 percent compared to the previous year. Lift revenue fell only 1.8 percent – the cushion provided by season passes sold months earlier, before anyone knew how bad the snow would be. But the ancillary spending reveals what the top-line numbers obscure. Ski school revenue down 14.9 percent. Dining down 15.9 percent. Retail and rentals down 6 percent. People aren’t coming, and when they do come, they’re not staying as long or spending as much.
This isn’t one resort’s misfortune or one company’s quarterly earnings disappointment. This is Colorado’s winter, measurable in missing inches and empty chairlifts, in workers whose January paychecks never materialized and towns watching their economic lifeblood thin out like the snowpack itself.
The Numbers Don’t Lie
Nearly one-third of Colorado’s SNOTEL stations – the automated sensors that measure snow water equivalent across the high country – are reporting their lowest or second-lowest snowpack on record for this point in the season. The Upper Colorado River Basin sits at 77 percent of median snow water equivalent. The Rio Grande Basin registers 40 percent. As of mid-December, all of Colorado’s major river basins were running between 54 and 63 percent of normal snowpack. Not a single ski resort in the state had measured more than 70 inches of total snowfall by late December.
The villain isn’t a lack of storms. December precipitation across much of Colorado ran near or even above normal. The problem is temperature. December 2025 was the warmest December on record for Colorado, and that warmth transformed what should have been snow into rain at elevations where ski resorts operate. When meteorologists talk about snow water equivalent, they’re measuring the amount of liquid water contained in the snowpack – a more reliable indicator of water supply and ski conditions than simple depth. This year, the SWE numbers tell a story of precipitation that fell in the wrong form, at the wrong elevations, or melted shortly after accumulating.
The current state varies by resort but shares a common theme: limited terrain, late openings, and bases that would normally be considered marginal even in early December. Vail operates with reduced terrain. Breckenridge concentrated its operations on core runs where snowmaking could build adequate coverage. Smaller operations face harder choices – whether to open at all with the thin coverage available, whether to burn through water and electricity budgets on snowmaking when natural snow might not arrive to supplement it.
Colorado isn’t suffering alone, but the pain isn’t distributed evenly across the West.
A Tale of Three Regions
Utah faces similar conditions. The state’s snowpack mirrors Colorado’s struggles – warm temperatures, precipitation falling as rain, base depths well below seasonal norms. The Upper San Juan, Rio Grande Headwaters, and Gunnison Basins, which feed into critical water supplies, sit at 56, 62, and 82 percent of normal snow water equivalent respectively. Utah resorts, like their Colorado counterparts, are playing the waiting game.
The Sierra Nevada tells a different story. Early December looked catastrophic. Record warmth melted existing snow and turned incoming storms into rain events at all but the highest elevations. Then late December arrived with a pattern shift. Mammoth and Kirkwood stacked up five feet of snow over the Christmas week. The Sierra’s western slope now runs 78 to 138 percent of median snow water equivalent depending on location. The eastern Sierra sits above median at many stations. The Christmas storms didn’t just save the season – they put the Sierra ahead of schedule.
The Pacific Northwest struggled through what may have been its worst early season on record. Oregon’s Cascades registered 8 to 26 percent of median snow water equivalent in early December. The Willamette Basin sat near 26 percent, the Hood/Sandy/Lower Deschutes zone near 29 percent. November 2025 was the region’s warmest November on record. Atmospheric rivers brought abundant moisture, but with freezing levels hovering thousands of feet too high, the precipitation fell as rain. No Oregon resort opened for Thanksgiving. Some didn’t open until late December. Washington fared marginally better but still saw snowpack well below normal across most basins. Recent January storms have helped, but the damage to the early season was already done.
The pattern reveals itself in the details. Montana, Idaho, and Wyoming’s western mountains are doing fine – some basins running above median. The Flathead Basin in Montana sits at 121 percent of median. Wyoming’s Snake Basin registers 123 percent. These interior ranges stay cold enough that when storms arrive, precipitation falls as snow through the critical elevation bands. The Rockies of Colorado and Utah, positioned differently in the broader atmospheric pattern and experiencing record warmth, couldn’t convert moisture into snowpack.
For Colorado, the stakes are measured in billions.
The Economic Arithmetic
The Colorado ski industry generates an estimated $4.8 to $5 billion in annual economic impact. It supports more than 46,000 year-round equivalent jobs and contributes $1.9 billion in annual labor income across the state. Those numbers assume normal seasons with normal snowfall and normal visitation patterns. This is not a normal season.
Vail Resorts, as the largest operator in Colorado, provides the clearest window into what a 20 percent drop in skier visits means. The company’s season pass model – sell access in advance, lock in capital before the first flake falls – protects lift revenue. People who bought Epic Passes in the spring paid regardless of whether they actually show up to ski. But the 14.9 percent drop in ski school revenue represents instructors with fewer lessons, which means fewer hours, which means smaller paychecks. The 15.9 percent decline in dining revenue translates to servers, cooks, and bartenders working shorter shifts or getting cut from schedules entirely. Retail and rental workers face the same calculus.
These jobs don’t come with safety nets. Many ski industry workers are seasonal employees, often young people or itinerants who migrate to mountain towns for winter work. They pay mountain town rents – Breckenridge, Vail, Aspen – where housing costs don’t decline just because the snow didn’t show up. When January visitation drops 20 percent, January paychecks disappear. Some workers leave early, heading to other resorts or other jobs. Some tough it out, burning through savings and hoping February brings recovery.
The pain radiates outward from resort operations into the surrounding communities. Mountain towns in Colorado are built on winter tourism revenue. Restaurants see fewer covers. Retail shops move less merchandise. Lodges and hotels track cancellations. Tax revenues that fund local services and infrastructure depend on those transactions occurring. The ski industry’s economic impact operates as a multiplier – each skier visit touches multiple businesses, each dollar spent cycles through the local economy. When visitation drops 20 percent, the compounding effects exceed the top-line number.
Not all resorts feel the impact equally. Larger operations with extensive snowmaking can maintain better conditions and keep more terrain open. Smaller resorts without the capital to invest in massive snowmaking infrastructure suffer more. Resorts positioned to catch storms from favorable directions fare better than those in snow shadows. But across Colorado, the season has forced everyone into damage control mode.
CEO Rob Katz, in Vail Resorts’ January 15 announcement, described conditions as “one of the worst early season snowfalls in the western U.S. in over 30 years.” The company now expects full-year earnings to come in below the low end of previous guidance, assuming conditions return to normal by Presidents’ Day weekend in mid-February. If they don’t, the downside grows steeper.
For workers already missing January wages, for towns already tracking revenue shortfalls, the distinction between a bad season and a catastrophic one comes down to whether February and March deliver. The industry has been here before.
The Ghosts of Droughts Past
In December 1976, Colorado Senator Floyd Haskell made a plea that became infamous. Tourists should stay away from Colorado ski resorts, he said, because there wasn’t enough snow to ski. The statement was intended to manage expectations and prevent disappointed visitors. Instead, it became a self-fulfilling prophecy. Reservations were cancelled en masse. Crested Butte reported 100 percent cancellations in the days before Christmas. Only 19 of the state’s 32 ski areas were open by Christmas week.
Denver Post columnist Charlie Meyers visited Aspen that month and wrote of businesses “hacking out a hand-to-mouth existence” as the town descended into pessimism. “The psychology is like the aftermath of a train wreck,” he wrote. Vail, in an act of desperation or theater depending on your perspective, called in Ute Indians to perform a snow dance. In Steamboat, 425 residents – most of them jobless – spent the week before Christmas shoveling snow from trees onto the slopes. The 1976-77 season remains the worst on record.
The 1980-81 season earned the nickname “The Season of None.” Only 26 of Colorado’s 32 ski areas were open in January. Some Breckenridge old-timers still remember trucks hauling snow harvested from the snowfield at St. Mary’s up to Summit County to patch bases that measured 12 to 16 inches at midseason. By April 1981, the drought – which stretched from Maine to California – had driven skier visits down by 10 million nationally.
That winter changed the industry. In the 1979-80 season, 435 acres of Colorado’s ski slopes were covered by snowmaking. By the 1981-82 season, resorts were covering more than 2,000 acres with manmade snow. Pride was swallowed. The marketing of Colorado’s “finest powder” gave way to the reality that survival required technology to supplement nature.
The 2002-03 season saw Denver record just 7.48 inches of precipitation – the lowest since records began in 1872. January 2003 was one of the driest in history across most of the West. But that season staged a late recovery. February and March brought storms that salvaged conditions and demonstrated that patterns can shift.
More recently, 2011-12 delivered record low snowfall to Winter Park and Loveland. The season was as bad as 1976-77 along the I-70 corridor. Even Arapahoe Basin, the state’s highest-elevation resort known for operating into June or July in good years, closed a month early. March that year was record dry, and terrain melted out during what is normally Colorado’s most reliable ski month.
The industry didn’t die. It adapted. Massive investments in snowmaking infrastructure became standard. Resorts diversified into summer operations – mountain biking, hiking, festivals – to reduce dependence on winter revenue. The marketing evolved from selling powder to selling experience. But each drought left scars. Workers displaced. Small businesses closed. The operations that survived tended to be the larger ones with capital to weather bad seasons and invest in snowmaking. The smaller resorts, the independents, the ones without deep pockets – some didn’t make it.
The pattern emerging from these historical droughts isn’t reassuring. This is the third significant snow crisis in 15 years. The question isn’t whether Colorado will recover from this season. The question is what that recovery costs and whether the frequency of these events signals something more permanent.
The Waiting Game
La Niña patterns typically favor Colorado’s northern mountains – Steamboat, Winter Park – with consistent snowfall and colder temperatures. But this La Niña has run warm. NOAA’s outlook for January shows equal chances for above or below normal precipitation along the I-70 corridor, which is forecaster language for “we don’t have a strong signal.” Southern Colorado and northern New Mexico face increased odds of warmer, drier conditions. The next two weeks trend warm and dry across the region.
January historically brings recovery storms to Colorado. February and March are typically the state’s snowiest months. A pattern flip – a sustained shift toward colder temperatures and better storm positioning – could salvage the season. The 2002-03 drought demonstrated that late-season snowfall can erase early deficits. But base depths matter. Playing catch-up is harder when you’re starting from 40 percent of normal rather than 70 percent.
Resorts are managing what they can control. Snowmaking operations run around the clock where temperatures allow. Terrain management has become strategic – concentrate operations on fewer runs, build adequate coverage where it’s most critical, manage expectations about what will and won’t open. Arapahoe Basin implemented a “directed skiing” program, guiding skiers to terrain with the best coverage rather than spreading thin conditions across the mountain.
The bigger questions don’t have easy answers. Climate models suggest warmer winters are becoming the trend rather than the aberration. The industry must reckon with whether this is the new normal. Snowmaking helps – it extends seasons, maintains base areas, provides insurance against warm spells – but it has limits. It requires cold temperatures. It requires water, which is increasingly precious in a region facing long-term drought. It requires electricity and capital. At some point, the economics of making snow in 40-degree weather stop working.
Presidents’ Day weekend, February 15-17, represents a critical test. It’s one of the busiest periods of the ski season. Families on break, strong visitation, high spending. If conditions haven’t improved by then, if terrain remains limited and bases remain thin, the hit to resort revenue and town economies will compound. If February delivers and March follows through, the season can still be salvaged – not saved, but salvaged.
The season pass model that has protected companies like Vail Resorts in the short term carries its own risk. Pass holders who spent hundreds or thousands of dollars for access to limited terrain at marginal conditions will remember when it’s time to renew for 2026-27. Vail Resorts reported that Epic Pass sales declined for the first time this year, a warning sign that the model’s resilience has boundaries. Reputation damage takes years to repair. Workers who left for better opportunities elsewhere don’t always come back.
For mountain towns, the calculus extends beyond this season’s revenue. Snowpack is water supply. The snow that falls this winter becomes the runoff that fills reservoirs and rivers next summer. A winter that fails to deliver adequate snowpack creates problems that extend well past ski season.
What the Mountains Remember
The snow will return. It always does. Colorado’s mountains have weathered droughts before – the legendary disasters of 1976-77 and 1980-81, the recent struggles of 2011-12. The industry adapted, invested, survived. But this is the third significant crisis in 15 years, and the interval between droughts appears to be shrinking. What once looked like bad luck increasingly resembles a pattern.
For the workers who’ve already lost January wages, timing is everything. For the towns counting on February and March revenue to make their year, the wait grows more expensive by the day. For an industry built on the assumption that snow will fall in predictable patterns at predictable times, the increasing unpredictability forces uncomfortable reckonings.
The mountains will remember this winter the way they remember every winter – in the depth of their snowpack, in the flow of their rivers, in the patterns written into tree rings and lake sediments. The people who depend on those mountains will remember too. Not in geological time, but in lost paychecks and cancelled reservations and the cold arithmetic of an economy built on white gold that didn’t show up when it was supposed to.
Whether February brings redemption or March extends the suffering, the lesson is already written: the reliability of Colorado snow, the foundation on which a $5 billion industry was built, is becoming less reliable. The industry will adapt because it has to. The question is what that adaptation costs and who pays the price.
