WYOMING — A University of Wyoming (UW) research scientist has co-authored a study about the impact of a potentially warming future on Rocky Mountain ski resorts, and findings suggest that Jackson Hole Mountain Resort (JHMR) and Grand Targhee Resort could become “ski refuges” as snow reliability decreases elsewhere.
Pramod Adhikari, a researcher with UW’s Department of Atmospheric Science, was the lead author of the paper “Charting resilience at Rocky Mountain ski areas as winters shrink.” Adhikari collaborated with two UW colleagues — Professor Bart Geerts and Assistant Professor Stefan Rahimi — as well as Kristen Rasmussen, of Colorado State University, and Bridger Huhn and Mikkel Quam, both with Innosphere and the National Science Foundation ASCEND Engine in Colorado and Wyoming.
The study was published in early September in NPJ Climate and Atmospheric Science. Researchers used historic climate data from 98 ski resorts in the Western U.S. between 1990 and 2024, including snow and weather data from SNOTEL sites close to ski areas. The data was then placed into a physics-based computer model that generated a historic climate and future climate simulation from 2032 to 2066. From there, researchers divided 36 Rocky Mountain region resorts into one of four risk categories: low, moderate, high and extreme.
“The risk score here is not the probability that either the resort will close or have a bad year, but it is an index that we developed to compare the climate-related pressures on these ski areas,” Adhikari told Buckrail. “So it combines the natural snow viability; snow-making opportunities that most of the ski resorts use for early opening; and also the impact of rain on snowpack.”
The dataset of Rocky Mountain ski areas included 18 in Colorado, 11 in Utah, four in Wyoming and three in Montana. The Wyoming locations were JHMR, Grand Targhee, Snowy Range Ski Area and White Pine Resort. The findings ultimately showed that impacts will vary widely, depending upon the location and elevation of skiing. The study states that the smallest changes in natural ski days are anticipated at the resorts with the most natural snow: places like Grand Targhee, Alta in Utah, and Snowmass in Colorado. The number of possible ski days lost to warm weather or rain directly ties into a resort’s risk score. Places with the largest increase in risk score include resorts like Sundance, Park City and Deer Valley (all in Utah) due to an increase in warm days and a decrease in days with natural snow.
“On average (all ski resorts, all years), the Thanksgiving period will become less snow-secure in the [future climate model], but the Christmas period is far less affected,” the study reads. The model suggested a 25% reduction in natural ski days over the Thanksgiving period, and a 6% reduction over the Christmas period.
The model predicted that JHMR and Grand Targhee, along with 10 others, will move from low to moderate risk over the next few decades. “They are affected by warming, but because they start with relatively favorable snow and temperature conditions in the Jackson Hole area, they may retain better ski conditions than other popular ski areas,” Adhikari said.
Rocky Mountain 1.3 (RM1.3) is a long-term climate model that uses a high-resolution dataset with a 1.3-kilometer scale. Adhikari said that RM1.3’s main advantage is the 1.3-km resolution, because mountain climates can change dramatically over short distances due to elevation and terrain. RM1.3 predicts that the Rocky Mountain region will warm at a faster rate than the global average, as well as faster than the Pacific Northwest. Despite the potential warming, the study indicates that Rocky Mountain ski areas will generally remain less at risk, with a smaller decrease in ski-season length and snow-making potential, and fewer rain-on-snow events.
“The Rocky Mountain region will be the ski refuge that people will be traveling for more … because the impact is less than in the Pacific Northwest or the Sierra Nevada,” Adhikari said. “So that’s, I think, positive news for the Rocky Mountain areas.”
