Snow Shortage on the Alps!
Picture yourself in my shoes, dear readers. It was early morning and I had begrudgingly woken myself up feeling as if I had slept four hours instead of twelve. Ignoring my questionable sleep schedule, I decided the best form of stimulation to start my day off with was a mindless scroll through my Tiktok For You page. Surely the most beneficial use of my time. (Note to Reader – there is a purpose to this anecdote; I am not simply sharing my mundane daily life for the sake of increasing my word count). Eventually something caught my eye – a news article in the middle of all the petty drama, and fun posts about my friend’s dog. A snow shortage in the Alps and other ski resorts across Europe. How strange, I thought, before simply continuing my day as if nothing happened. I never said I was the most news conscious reporter.
Anecdotes aside, this has been a rather unusual issue this winter. Not even a fortnight into the new year, weather records are already being broken throughout Europe all thanks to a heatwave theorised to be caused by human-induced climate change. A weather station in Delemont on the French border recorded a record average daily temperature of 18.1 degrees celsius on New Year’s Day. Last year was the hottest year on record for both France and Switzerland, and even here in the UK we saw temperatures up to and above 40 degrees celsius. The prolonged burning of fossil fuels have caused intense heat waves in the summer but also very warm periods in winter. A persistent flow of warm air from the west and southwest over the New years was another nail in the coffin for European ski resorts this January, and has locked in high temperatures for the next few days. Scary stuff!
This reporter is concerned what these temperature spikes could cause in the long run. All we can hope is that the climate deniers will finally see some sense when their lovely winter holiday is ruined by above-freezing temperatures for weeks on end. Here’s hoping as the days progress the heat will drop, otherwise I fear there is worse to come.
Millie Butcher, Chief (and only) reporter, Lower Seniors
References
https://www.irishexaminer.com/news/arid-41039783.html
https://www.euronews.com/2023/01/02/snow-shortage-in-the-alps-amid-abnormally-high-temperatures
