Western ski resorts and their terrible, horrible, no snow, very bad year

Bare slopes. Closed terrain. Canceled vacations.

In the Western United States, the 2026 ski season is shaping up to be one of the worst in decades.

A snow drought of historic proportions is hobbling many ski areas, leading skiers to stay home, mountain towns to face economic uncertainty, and sparking fears of water shortages and wildfires come summer.

In Colorado, the statewide snowpack is at 57% of average, a record low. Utah’s snowpack is at 62%, nearly the worst since observations began in 1980.

“It seems like a joke, but technically, the Florida Panhandle has seen more snowfall than Salt Lake City this year,” said Jon Meyer, assistant state climatologist at the Utah Climate Center.

The problems began early. In Utah, where license plates boast of “the greatest snow on Earth,” November and December featured the warmest average temperatures in about 130 years of record keeping. “The lack of winter storm activity and the warm air has combined to really limit accumulating snow days,” Meyer said. The weather, he added, is “aligned with what we’ve been predicting to occur as a result of climate change.”

The high temperatures meant that what precipitation did fall was more often rain than snow in many areas and by Thanksgiving, the traditional opening date for major resorts, only 11% of terrain at Western ski areas was open.

By Jan. 4, snow cover across the West was the lowest since NASA began tracking it via satellite in 2001. The drought is most severe in Washington, Oregon, Colorado, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico, with more than 80% of all snow-monitoring stations in these states reporting severe snow drought (snowpack below the 20th percentile).

“We experienced one of the worst early season snowfalls in the Western U.S. in over 30 years,” Rob Katz, CEO of Vail Resorts, which owns or operates 42 ski areas around the world and sells the multimountain Epic Pass, told investors in January.

Katz said that as of Jan. 4, skier visits to its resorts were down 20% compared to the previous year. Katz said that a banner ski season in the Northeast has helped offset the bleak Western winter. The company saw only a slight dip in lift revenue because about 75% of its skiers purchased Epic Passes before the season.

The drought is so bad that even after a recent winter storm that dropped a foot or more of snow on much of Colorado, Vail ski resort was still operating with only 62% of its terrain open, Breckenridge with just over half, and Arapahoe Basin with 20% of its terrain.

Many skiers are just bailing. James Harris, who owns Tin Plate Pizza in Breckenridge and manages three vacation home rentals, said he had four cancellations in one weekend. “They saw the weather forecast,” he lamented.

Inntopia, which handles lodging reservations for ski areas, reported that occupancy at ski areas in Colorado and Utah is down 4% compared with last year, the steepest drop since 2013, excluding the pandemic. Colorado Ski Country USA, which represents 20 of the state’s ski areas, reported that visits “are down sizable double digits.”

Drought isn’t the only challenge. Around North America, resorts are increasingly facing the threat of labor actions, as the cost of living in many ski towns has skyrocketed. In December, the owner of the Telluride ski area in western Colorado shut down the resort in response to a strike by ski patrollers. It is likely the first time that an American ski area has completely closed because of a labor dispute. The closure decimated the local economy, which is heavily dependent on tourism. The resort reopened Jan. 10 after reaching an agreement with its ski patrol.

Similarly, Le Massif de Charlevoix, a ski resort in Quebec, closed down for three weeks in January because of a strike.

“What happened in Telluride, we can never let that happen again in this industry,” Katz said. Telluride is a partner resort on Vail Resorts’ Epic Pass. Ski patrollers at Park City, which is owned by Vail Resorts, went on strike last year, though the resort remained open with limited terrain.

As if strikes and drought weren’t enough, many foreign skiers are staying away from the United States. “Geopolitics have driven international visitation to U.S. mountain resorts down 33% this winter, led largely by declines from Canada,” said Tom Foley, director of business intelligence at Inntopia.

Relief does not appear to be in sight. Meyer, the Utah climatologist, said there were no storms on the horizon that would let the West catch up on snowfall.

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The lean winter may soon translate into a dry summer and volatile wildfire season, since much of the West’s water supply is derived from the winter snowpack.

Barry Davis, the mayor of Vail, Colorado, insisted that it’s still worth skiing even if less than two thirds of Vail’s trails are open. “The skiing here is not what we’re accustomed to but it’s still pretty damn fun,” he said, noting that he had just returned from taking some runs to “clear my head.”

Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah, went on social media last week “to invite all Utahns to seek help from a higher power” in order to save this year’s Western ski season.

In other words: Pray for snow.