Winter in Vermont: Changes in Climate and Culture
By Valentin Kostelnik
When it snows these days, it seems as though more and more people are saying “At last! It’s good to know it still snows in Vermont.” I know the feeling, like winter is not what it used to be. Looking with trepidation at the next decades, wondering if Lake Champlain will ever freeze over again, if Vermont skiing will exist in 20 years, and listening to wistful Vermonters remembering when we had “real winters.”
In the 1800s, there were only three years where Lake Champlain didn’t completely freeze over. As of 2024, it has been ice-free for 16 of the past 24 winters. Average annual snowfall has decreased by 10 inches since 1960, and Vermont winters have warmed by 3.3˚F since 1900, well above the global average of about 1.9˚F. These statistics, as stunning as they are, can be hard to visualize, but there are countless localized impacts of climate change. Lilacs, a traditional herald of springtime, are now blooming several days earlier every decade. Gavin Sicard, a UVM senior from Colchester, can tell that “definitely we’ve had less snow in recent years…I remember as a kid you’d have decent snow coverage throughout the whole winter, which I feel is not how it is in Chittenden County now.” These changes are keenly felt, and are only predicted to intensify in our lifetimes.
Winter in Vermont is a special thing in the United States: like the winds in Chicago, it’s a defining characteristic. When I was accepted to UVM, the first thing my friends in California told me was “I hope you like the cold!” Winter and Vermont are closely intertwined in culture, image, economy, and even politics. Outdoor recreation brings in $1.9 billion annually to Vermont and makes up a greater percentage of state GDP than any other state except Hawai’i. Of that, winter recreation represents the largest portion, and the success of winter tourism is thanks in large part to the image of Vermont as a winter wonderland. One commentator even stated that snow has become “white gold…a commodity that can be enjoyed or sold to advantage”.
But as any Vermonter would tell you, winter is also a vital and unavoidable component of living here. Snowball fights, ski days with the family, cozy holidays, skating, sledding, hot chocolate on the slopes, walking out of sub-freezing temperatures into a warm home, shoveling the driveway; how important are these things to your life experience? This component is harder to put your finger on, and impossible to define by a dollar value or percentage of GDP. Climate change threatens to drastically change all of these experiences. What effect will that have on the psyche of Vermonters, and New Englanders as a whole?
First, we must ask how winter is experienced in Vermont currently, and how it molds the identity of people living here. Winter is a cold and dark time, but also a time for reflection, and has always been brightened by sparks of joy. For Gavin Sicard, snow has always been the best part of the winter. Gavin says, “I remember in highschool thinking, ‘the snow day is gonna save my mental sanity.’”
He recalls skiing every Friday night at Bolton with the neighborhood kids, or tying an ice-fishing sled to his dad’s ATV and being dragged wildly around his backyard. Apparently, snow is good to eat, too, as Gavin recalls filling bowls with snow as a snack. “You can’t call snow just cold water! Snow is delicious.” To an outsider like me, this seems quintessentially, perfectly, Vermont.
At least as early as the 1800s, Vermonters have been doing things much like Gavin and his family. Early 20th-century author Edward Crane affectionately describes the “three S’s - skating, sledding, and sleigh-riding,” and goes on to describe how the winter shapes the Vermont psyche, saying “When snow falls on Vermont, I like to think not only that it is remolding the landscape, but that it is also reshaping our character, to the extent at least that it renews our spunk.”
Part of this “reshaping” came from the isolation that winter brought, as heavy snow made travel nearly impossible. For your average farmer in 1900, the journey into Burlington in January was perilous, so you’d just stay near your farm. At the same time, winter’s slower pace made it a time for socializing and fun. Vermont author Blake Harrison writes about how “neighbors often came together on winter evenings for informal gatherings…guests would move furniture out of the host’s kitchen..to make way for music, dancing and socializing…Residents recall these parties happening just about every Saturday night.”
These evocations of joy, and Crane’s “reshaping our character,” seem somewhat idyllic, like something from a postcard, and indeed they seemed that way back then. A promoter in 1909 wrote, “To the weary people of crowded cities that would like…a genuine Vermont winter, a weekend visit to some comfortable village in the state will afford rare delights that maybe have only been read of in story books.”
A hundred years ago, just as today, winter was a formative piece of both the life experience of local Vermonters and how the rest of the nation thought of Vermont. Gradually, the image of Vermont’s winter became integral to the success of tourism here. The “story book” appeal was only heightened by Bing Crosby’s 1952 classic White Christmas, set in a cozy Vermont inn. One reporter argues that “Winter tourism’s success depended on the visitor’s ability to understand and embrace the very essence of winter in Vermont”.
While the image of winter was being constructed, skiing took over as the state’s most important recreational sector. For many people in Vermont, especially at UVM, skiing is the highlight of winter, but this is a relatively new phenomenon.
By some accounts, the first ski tow in the US was built in Woodstock in 1934, when the Royce family attached a rope to a Model-T engine and set the contraption up on a neighbor’s hill. Before the Royce tow, skinning and cross-country were the only forms of skiing in the state, and you had to hike hours through the forest for a single run. This slower, more traditional sport was rapidly transformed in postwar America. The first major breakthrough came in 1940, when the state’s first ski lift was built on Mount Mansfield, and automated lifts soon became the norm. They revolutionized skiing by opening the higher slopes of the Green Mountains, where the runs were steeper, the snow was deeper, and the season longer.
After that, skiing suddenly became easier and faster than ever. Whereas a backcountry skier could maybe get 3 runs in a day, people on the new lifts could get in a dozen or more runs. Skiing became a fast-paced sport. By 1949 there were 400,000 skiers in Vermont, and just ten years later the number exploded to 1,000,000. Vermont fixtures, such as Bromley, Sugarbush, Bolton, and Smuggler’s Notch, are all fairly young and were founded in the rapid growth of the 1950s and 1960s.
The towns close to the new resorts, especially in the Mad River Valley, had mixed feelings about winter’s newest industry. While many residents embraced the new jobs and faster runs, the fast-paced, corporate, mechanized sport also had a negative impact on Vermonter’s image of themselves. It didn’t fit into the traditional winters of slow days, hard work, and community events. One resident observed, “You’ve gone from an independent, self-reliant community to a group of people who provide services to the out-of-state wealthy.”
Nonetheless, from its humble beginnings as a Model-T tow on the hills of Woodstock, the ski industry has become a linchpin of Vermont’s economy. It’s estimated that skiing attracts roughly $1.6 billion annually to Vermont, and at the same time has become entrenched in Vermont’s culture and winter lifestyle. Vermonters nostalgically recall past family ski days, and for some college students, skiing is all that gets them through a week. Skiing is also a defining aspect of UVM, such that Evan Coleman, a first-year at UVM, says “the Ski and Snowboard Club is so huge here and pretty much everyone I know at the school does skiing in some way or another.” And today, this vast industry is directly in the path of climate change.
Winter is the fastest warming season in Vermont, at 3.3˚F since 1900. These impacts are often easily seen or perceived during the winter months, which can be when climate change feels the most apparent. For example, since the 1970s, Vermont lakes and ponds have been going ice-free one to three days earlier every decade. This statistic is keenly felt where skating on the pond in the backyard is a common family tradition, and where many towns place bets on what day the ice will break on a local pond. In addition, average annual snowfall has decreased by 10 inches since 1960, and this is the shift that makes climate change the most painfully obvious. When asked about climate change, Evan Coleman said he thinks about it “every day when thinking about the lack of snow here … here it drives the recreation.”
Christmas, one of the most iconic winter scenes, is supposed to have snow. But with less snowfall and more rain, there’s a good chance of having mud on the ground rather than a soft white blanket. Gavin describes, “It’s very disappointing when there’s no snow on the ground … it doesn’t really feel like it’s a Christmas Day when it’s dirt.”
What impacts will this have on Vermont’s identity, culture, and psyche? For one thing, climate anxiety and related mental health impacts will intensify. As Yale researcher Sarah Lowe defines it, “Climate anxiety is fundamentally distress about climate change and its impacts on the landscape and human existence.”
Gavin describes a different feeling, though. Not climate anxiety, but rather “... climate sadness that I experience when it’s wintertime and this part of the culture is dying. This experience that something that was really important is starting to diminish.”
This sensation is called solastalgia, or the “gradual removal of solace from the present state of one’s home environment.” It’s the sense that the world we grew up in, with all its joyous sledding, white Christmasses, and community skiing, is fading, and the solace and familiarity of that environment are fading with it. The concerns about an earlier ice-out manifest themselves in all the people who grew up skating on a nearby pond but feel like they don’t do it as much anymore. The decreased snowfall is felt by the lack of snow days, the worse skiing conditions, and a muddy Christmas.
One of the hardest trials of the winter is seasonal depression, which is more related to the shorter days and lack of sunlight than the cold or the snow. Everyone can relate when Gavin says “It’s terrible when it’s 4 pm, you’re still at work, and it’s black outside. I don’t know why the sun decided to do that to us!” The days won’t get any longer with climate change, but the more positive aspects of winter such as skiing, sledding, and skating, might be lessened. In one view, the best parts of winter will be lost, while the worst parts will stick around. Gavin describes:
I think it’s gonna be dark, muddy, the leaves still won’t be here, and all in all it’ll be a more depressing experience…If you see Vermont when there’s snow on the ground it’s all bright because it’s so reflective, but when the snow is gone only the darkness remains.
Solastalgia is all too easy to sink into these days. Climate anxiety is distinct from the other mental impacts of climate change, such as the stress caused by drought and famine, in that it is caused more by the specter of climate change than its physical impacts. While young people in high-income countries are sheltered from those physical stressors, research suggests they are the most vulnerable population to climate anxiety.
But it’s important to remember that winters are not everything, and they will not fade completely. Gavin’s favorite season is spring, and he says: “When I think of Vermont, I don’t think it’s synonymous with winter. I think the more classic Vermont season is autumn, with the leaves changing ... And a big part of my thinking of Vermont is Lake Champlain, which is more summer-coded.” Economically, outdoor recreation is based on more than just skiing, snow-making technology is developing rapidly, and Vermont is not likely to lose its appeal to tourists in the coming decades. And though average temperatures and snowfall will decrease there is large variability between years, so some individual winters will still have heavy snow and freezing temperatures.
Additionally, it is important to remember that drastic changes to our surroundings are hardly unique. Consider skiing before the 40s and 50s: it was not a significant part of people’s winter experience. Students at UVM couldn’t ski mornings before classes, and in fact, some people thought large ski resorts ran against traditional winter activities. A few decades later, in 1972, a commentator wrote about the towns of Mad River: “The developments bring more jobs for slinging hash and plowing snow. But the identity of our towns is changing significantly in the process and it’s not changing for the better.”
This concept of change is key. The human experience of Vermont winter probably changed more in the 20th century than it will in the 21st century. In the mid-19th century, winter was a time of work the same as the other seasons. Milk cows still needed to be milked daily, teams went out to cut blocks of ice for summer refrigeration, while loggers used the frozen ground to cut timber for sale. As Blake Harrison writes, “Many of us today could not even imagine waking up in a dark, poorly heated home on a sub-zero day to milk a herd of twenty cows before breakfast.”
Much has changed since then. The arrival of landlines, TVs, and snowplows lessened the sense of isolation; lifts transformed skiing into a fast-paced sport, while industrial agriculture and transportation now allow me to eat lettuce and tomatoes in February. One way of life ending does not mean the world is ending. While climate change is unique, rapid changes to human experience are not. It’s crucial to keep the changes facing our generation in the context of the past, focus on the beautiful things that remain to us, and fight to keep the change as minimal as possible. H
Art by Sadie Holmes
