‘GOING TO BE OVER’

Alps Resorts Shutter Amid Historic Winter Heatwave Across Europe

The climate change-induced heat wave rolling over Europe has shattered thousands of temperature records across the continent.

The historic New Years heat wave rolling over Europe shattered thousands of local climate records across the continent, threatening winter-time economies around the Alps, where unseasonably warm air from the jet stream soared temperatures as high as 64 degrees Fahrenheit in some regions. After opening for just a month, resorts in the northern Alps and French Pyrenees have found themselves struggling for snow. Meanwhile, larger resorts like Switzerland’s Adelboden-Lenk, which will host the FIS Ski World Cup on Saturday, are planning to run the race on 100 percent artificial snow. Higher altitude regions in the Southern Alps have close to normal snowfall available for snowboarders and skiers, but lower altitude regions are looking to miss out—likely for the foreseeable future, as the region speculates decades ahead without its iconic snowy peaks. “In the future, these problems will get worse, because the snow will continue to melt as long as the climate warms,” said University of Brussels climate science professor Wim Thiery to Sky News. “By the end of the century (it's) just going to be over... skiing in the Alps as we know it.”