Editor's letter: The snow in Sochi

last updated 8 January 2015

The Winter Olympics are currently being held in a strange simulacrum of winter. Even in the mountains above the palm-lined resort of Sochi, temperatures have been well above freezing. Snowboarders, who unlike Olympic officials pride themselves on gnarly straight-talking, are using words like “garbage,” “crappy,” and “mush” to describe the conditions. The Russians had hoped to ward off this predicament by enlisting shamans from the Golden Mountains of southern Siberia to perform a special snow ceremony, but now they’re resorting to plan B and breaking out the snow they’ve been preserving under insulation since last winter. A fake winter, it seems, is the best they can muster.

It’s easy to blame Vladimir Putin’s overweening ambitions for steering the Games to the warmest town in Russia (see Controversy). But as The New York Times reported this week—ironically, just as more nasty storms slammed the South and the East Coast—snow is becoming rarer in mountains everywhere. Ski areas in California’s Sierra Nevada had only 15 percent of normal snowpack until getting a promising dump last week, and even resorts in the Alps get by these days only with the help of energy-hungry snowmaking machinery. A Canadian professor has calculated that if predictions of a rise in February temperatures of 3.8 degrees Fahrenheit by midcentury are correct, nine of the 19 cities that have so far hosted the Winter Olympics will lack the snow and cold temperatures they’d need to do so again. I know there’s powder out there somewhere, but this winter I’ve only slogged through the icy slop churned out by loud, obnoxious snow cannons. The thrill of braving the elements feels pretty contrived when we have to make our own snow.