After the earliest start to the ski season in a decade with one of the busiest Christmas/New Year's holidays ever, things have taken a sudden turn for the worst. Skiing on New Year's day gave me the opportunity to enjoy one of the rare occassions to enjoy "powder" skiing in Ontario. Now a week later and after several days of record breaking temperatures followed by today's near gail force winds, the ski slopes are suffering and green lawns prevail in town. Gusty 100+ kilometer per hour winds forced the closure of Blue Mountain's Silver Bullet chairlift with scarely a skier or pedestrian to be seen in the Intrawest Village. Global warming is no doubt playing a role in the freakest weather we have experienced this week but January thaws have been a regular occurrence for as long as I can remember. While temperatures reached 12 and 14 degrees throughout the province in the last few days it was interesting to note that similar highs and previous records were set in the 1930's and 40's. Global warming or not, we have a lot of winter yet and snow making crews will no doubt be hard at work over this coming weekend restoring the slopes when temperatures once again return to a January norm.
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