Do Winter Hype Forecasts Kill The Ski Industry?

Stowe Mountain Resort posted this inviting photograph on Instagram
today. According to an Outside magazine article, ski areas like
Stowe often find themselves battling perceptions that weather
is too severe for skiing, which hurts the bottom line. 

When they tell you the wind chill is terrible, or the roads are glare ice or that you shouldn't travel because it's going to snow, do you cancel your plans?  

Often, that's a good thing to do. You don't want to be reckless.

To many others, this caution is not always a great thing. According to a recent article in Outside, over-hyped winter weather forecasts are damaging the ski industry. The article is worth the full read. 

According to Outside:

"'Negative weather reporting absolutely has an effect on ski area attendance,' says Kelly Pawlak, president of the National Ski Areas Association. It's especially true, she says, for smaller resorts near population centers that rely on the casual, two-or-three times per year skier. 'A negative report on Thursday can scrap a lot of upcoming wekeend ski plans for a resort that relies on day trips.'"

Anything that affects the ski industry here in Vermont is of course important. The Vermont Ski Areas Association said there were nearly 4 million skier days in the Green Mountain State last year, according to VTDigger.  A skier day is one person skiing one full day, which a standard way of counting business in the ski industry.

This winter has been good, so the number of recent visitors to Vermont might have gone up. We'll have to wait until the end of the season for statistics.

The Vermont Ski Areas Association says the industry creates about $900 million in direct spending, $120 million in taxes, reports VTDigger. The business supports 12,000 direct jobs and roughly 22,000 indirecrt jobs here.

Which leads us to the constant tension between reasonable warnings to people who would otherwise be careless with winter weather, and the tendency for many media outlets and weather geeks on social media to overhype winter cold and storms.

Ski enthusiasts tell Outside, and by extension the rest of us, that wind chill alerts are overdone. When you hear a forecast for 20 below wind chills, that doesn't mean it will constantly feel that cold out there. The 20 below "real feel" as some call it, come during peak gusts when the sun isn't out.

During these cold weather events, the wind chill is usually warmer than 20 below, plus the sun makes it feel a little warmer out. Plus, winter clothing is better than ever these days, shielding outdoor sports types from some of the worst weather winter can fling at us.

You've heard the saying: "It's not bad weather, it's bad clothing."  That logic is, if you get too cold and wet outdoors during the winter, it's because you're not wearing the right clothes.

Ski areas are lobbying meteorologists and other weather types about being careful with their winter forecasts and not being too negative.

Says Outside:

"In December, at one of the summits (to) combat negative winter weather reporting, the North American Snowsports Journalist Association organized an event for a dozen broadcast meteorologists at Stratton Mountain Resort (in Vermont).

The three-day event featured technical climate presentations, but also a discussion, led by a North Face employee, on layering, wind proofing, and other snowsports dress techniques. There was plenty of time for skiing and snowshoeing, too. 

The idea, says organizer Adam White, is to make weather journalists more comfortable with winter conditions and to reduce their bias on-air or even Instagram. 'Meteorologists are surprisingly popular on social media,' says White. 'Everyone wants to know about the weather.'"

In my opinion, there's a lot of things going on here. It's always complicated, and you're never going to make everybody happy.

First of all, there is indeed a tendency to overhype things, particularly on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and other platforms are rife with breathless reports of impending Blizzards of the Century. If you were to believe social media, the Blizzards of the Century come about once every hour.

Wind chill alerts become gloom and doom on social media, telling everyone that if they step outdoors for just one second in these conditions, they will magically turn into an ice cube from which they will never thaw.

The point is eyeballs and clicks. The more hype there is, the more potential clicks and the more money to be made. Social media is certainly not the most ethical place in the world.

On the other hand, Outside magazine caters mostly to people who know what they're doing. An experienced skiing, rider or snowshoe enthusiast, upon learning of a severe wind chill forecast, will just bring along the right gear and they'll be all set and happy.

But there's plenty of stupid people out there, too. You have to hammer home the dangers to people who think nothing of hopping into their cars in a light sweater when it's 30 below for a road trip in a blizzard. Then when they get stuck, they freeze, because they didn't prepare.

Still, the Outside article might prompt me to be a little more nuanced in my reports. Like most weather geeks, I get excited over the drama of storms and weather extremes. I try to keep it in my sneaker, but sometimes my thrill of the weather betrays me.

I can probably try to play to two audiences: One piece of my essays would play to the people who might not be so prepared for the weather, while the other side of me would tell people to go out and play in the extreme weather, if they're smart enough to do it.

God forbid I stop anyone from going out and playing in the snow if they can. Because frankly, the snow and ice that I can see out my window is a total waste unless we find a way to enjoy it.