Sustaining Snow: Southeastern Ski Resorts Face a Shrinking Winter

Machine-made snow is no longer a luxury for ski resorts in the southeastern United States—it is becoming the difference between opening for the holidays and losing a season. A new master’s study warns that even modest warming is steadily eroding the cold, dry conditions resorts need to make snow, while making water and energy demands more intense.

What the study found

Nicholas Scott Prentice’s dissertation, completed through James Madison University and the University of Malta, analyzed NOAA hourly weather records from 2005 to 2025 for six representative Southeastern ski areas: Wisp, Snowshoe, Winterplace, Massanutten/Wintergreen, and Bryce. It then used regression-based scenarios to estimate conditions around 2040 under moderate and high warming pathways.

The central finding is stark: available snowmaking hours declined by 0.31 to 5.11 percent per decade across the study area. February showed the strongest warming signal, with increases in both average and cold-hour wet-bulb temperatures—the measure that determines whether water droplets can freeze efficiently into snow.

By 2040, the models project slightly higher wet-bulb temperatures and proportional declines in usable cold hours. The study concludes that “even modest warming can disproportionately affect snowmaking efficiency, resource demand, and operational stability” in the region.

Why wet-bulb matters

Snow guns do not simply need cold air. They need low wet-bulb temperature, a combined measure of temperature and humidity. The study identifies 28°F (-2.2°C) as a key threshold for effective snow production; warmer, more humid air slows freezing and can leave slopes with wetter, lower-quality snow.

That makes the Southeast especially exposed. The region already has lower natural snowfall and greater winter temperature variability than many U.S. ski regions, and the study notes that Southeastern temperatures have risen about 2.7°F since the 1970s, alongside a loss of 4–7 freezing days per year.

Resorts are adapting—but at a cost

Interviews with snowmaking managers at Wisp, Snowshoe, and Massanutten indicated that the pressures are already visible: later openings, shorter cold spells, and greater reliance on high-capacity automated snowmaking systems.

Those systems can preserve operations, but they are not cost-free. More snowmaking means more pumping, compressed air or fan power, water withdrawals, and infrastructure investment. The study warns that adaptation can raise resorts’ carbon footprint even as it helps them cope with a warming climate—an inherent tension for an industry marketing itself around winter.

Rain adds another threat

The research found no clear long-term trend in total winter precipitation or precipitation extremes, but it found that heavy, episodic rain remains operationally disruptive. A single warm rainstorm can erase weeks of snowmaking work, forcing resorts to rebuild a snow base while consuming more water and energy.

What it means for the business

The implications extend beyond slope conditions. Resorts depend heavily on holiday-period visits, and delayed openings can hit revenue during the most valuable weeks of the season. The study suggests that Southeastern resorts may need to shift toward later starts, greater emphasis on mid-season operations, and marketing strategies less dependent on a reliable Christmas snowpack.

It also points to broader pressures on staffing, risk management, and resource competition, particularly where water and energy systems face growing demand.

The study’s limits

This is a regional feasibility study, not a resort-by-resort business forecast. It does not model operating costs, water consumption, energy use, or actual snow output, and it uses nearby NOAA weather stations as proxies for mountain conditions. Microclimates created by elevation, slope, and temperature inversions mean individual resorts may fare better or worse than the regional averages suggest.

The bottom line

The study’s message is not that Southeastern skiing will disappear overnight. Rather, it argues that snowmaking is becoming a more expensive, more resource-intensive, and more finely timed form of climate adaptation. Long-term viability, Prentice concludes, will depend on strategic investment in snowmaking technology, expanded water and energy infrastructure, and on-site weather monitoring at both summit and base.

For resorts in the southern Appalachians, the future of skiing may be decided less by how much snow falls from the sky—and more by how many cold, dry hours remain available to manufacture it.