At midnight Tuesday on Maverick Mountain, the whir of snowcats turning on to groom new snow marked the long-awaited start to the ski season.
Co-owner and operator Erik Borge hit the slopes with a small crew to groom snow in the darkness. The air stood still after a cold, teeth-chattering storm swept through the area. The early January snowfall was finally enough for the mountain to open this weekend. But there was still plenty to do to prepare.
Borge said Monday the goal was to start grooming the slopes late at night, right after the storm had slowed.
“We don’t want to lose any moisture out of the snow and immediately be on it packing it down,” Borge said.
So far this year, snow has been a rare commodity, impacting everything from winter recreation to agriculture.
Maverick, a local ski hill near Dillon, has been ready to open since Thanksgiving. But Borge said this is the worst snow year the resort has seen in nearly a decade — and remaining closed through December comes with a hefty cost.
Maverick is one of many Montana ski resorts that have struggled with the lack of snowfall so far this winter. Smaller resorts and those without snowmaking capacity have been hit especially hard, with impacts from delayed openings cascading into local economies.
“I pretty much equate the holiday break for at least a quarter, if not a third, of my income for the year. So you know, that's a pretty substantial hit,” Borge said.
With less reliable snow, experts predict the Montana ski season will shorten over time. Borge said this is something he is already seeing and anticipates Maverick needing to invest in snowmaking equipment.
Though Maverick plans to open on Jan. 13, some terrain will remain inaccessible, which Borge said is unprecedented for this time of year.
Still other ski resorts haven’t been able to open at all.
Turner Mountain just north of Libby, Blacktail Mountain in Lakeside, and Teton Pass near Choteau had yet to begin operations.
In a rare move, the shortage led to some ski areas within the Montana Ski Area Association — a non-profit organization made up of 15 of the state's ski areas that sponsors employee education and industry safety events and supplies marketing funds to promote skiing statewide — to share their snow. Over the holidays, select resorts started honoring the season passes of peer resorts who remained closed.
Bridger Bowl is one of the open resorts lending a hand to others in the association.
“We’re a pretty tight knit group,” said Bridger spokesperson Erin O’Connor. “We would bend over backwards to help each other out.”
Bruce Zwang, president of the non-profit Kootenai Winter Sports Ski Education Foundation that runs Turner Mountain, said there is still a direct impact to the community when the ski hill is shuttered.
“Libby is a very quiet community in the wintertime. There's not a whole lot going on here and Turner's always been a real shot in the arm for local businesses,” Zwang said.
The delayed opening also put Turner’s five employees out of work while they waited for enough snow.
‘Snowpack is our mountain reservoir’: Impacts to summer water supply
Aside from the heavy blow to the ski industry, low snow years also affect water supply and agriculture.
According to Montana’s water supply outlook report for January, there is a statewide deficit of about 2 to 4 inches in snow water equivalent compared to normal levels for this time of year. One inch of SWE is equal to approximately 10 inches of fresh snow.
This year’s trends are in line with the El Niño climate pattern, which predicts warmer temperatures and less precipitation.
While snowstorms in early January have given the snowpack a slight boost, experts said it wasn’t enough to push levels to normal for this time of year.
It’s a shift from the last three years of La Niña in Montana, where weather trended wetter and colder. Last January, snowpack in southwest Montana was 95 to 135% of normal for this time of year.
But this January, snowpack across Montana was about 30 to 60% of normal. “Normal” is calculated based on averages from the last 30 years.
Snowpack in the Gallatin basin was 54% of normal, the Madison basin 57% of normal and the Upper Yellowstone basin 55% of normal, according to Jan. 8 data from the Natural Resource and Conservation Service.
The low snowpack is the result of a lack of precipitation and unseasonably warm temperatures, said Eric Larson, a NRCS water supply specialist who writes water outlook reports for Montana.
The dry winter has even set some records. In the Bridgers, the Brackett Creek monitoring site recorded its lowest snowpack on Jan. 1 in 30 years, and the Sacagawea site the lowest in 25 years.
In the Gallatin Range, the Lick Creek site recorded the lowest Jan. 1 snowpack in 61 years, Shower Falls the lowest in 59 years, Lone Mountain the lowest in 33 years and Hebgen the lowest in 85 years.
Still, there are several months left for the snowpack to accumulate and peak, meaning big spring storms could make up for the winter’s dry start, NRCS’s Larson said. That kind of snowpack recovery has happened in past years that saw a dry start to winter but then received boosts from large storms in spring, like in 2017 and 2022.
“However, the snowpack wasn’t quite as low as it currently is and to rely on record high precipitation isn’t ideal. Winter weather needs to arrive soon so the snowpack can recover,” Larson said.
The snowpack level is hugely important for the state’s water supply, as rivers used for irrigation and drinking water are fed by melting snowpack from the mountains.
In the first 10 days of January, Bozeman received 2 to 4 inches of snow and the Bridger Bowl snow report recorded 6 inches.
Cody Moldan, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Great Falls, said the recent snowfall “will definitely help” make up for the slow start to winter, but more important is what snowpack levels look like come spring.
Larson echoed that what the snowpack looks like in April and May is more important than levels right now. For example, if the snowpack peaks early and melts rapidly, or remains sparse through spring, that means less water available later in the summer.
Long-term climate models for Montana predict the state will start seeing more rainfall instead of snow in the winters, which could mean less water available when it’s most needed.
“If there is more rain rather than snow, there is concern… Our snowpack is our mountain reservoir that slowly — ideally — is releasing water through the summer months. But if it comes as rain, it’s just going to flush through the system and be downstream not available for use, prior to when we need to use it in the drier summer months.”
Susan Duncan, a rancher in Gallatin Valley and board member for the Association of Gallatin Agricultural Irrigators, said low snow years impact the hay harvest and cattle herd sizes for ranchers.
In wetter years, Duncan and other ranchers can get multiple cuttings of hay to feed cattle through winter. In drier years, hayfields don’t grow as well, forcing ranchers to buy expensive hay from elsewhere — or make the tough decision to sell more cattle.
Duncan said in bad drought years, like in 2021, even finding hay to buy is hard, with few ranchers having a surplus available to sell.
That summer also marked senior water users getting cut off from irrigating for several weeks, which rarely happens, Duncan said.
“If you have a crop that’s not getting water for three weeks, you may be in a position where you can lose the crop — aka, your income for the year,” Duncan said.
Some ranchers worry this year could be similar. Duncan said the ranch is planning to cut the herd in half by 2025, with drought and less available hay both playing a role in that decision.
“Nobody is going to be able to have excess hay,” Duncan said. “So you have to cut your (cattle) numbers to match what you have.”
On some fields that are normally thick with snow and mud by January, there was only dirt and dust last week, Duncan said. She was able to go out there in tennis shoes instead of muck boots — conditions she never remembers experiencing since she moved here in 1976.
On the bright side, the dry weather meant ranchers had more time to catch up on field work and do some outdoor projects that normally can’t be done in the winter, Duncan said.
She added it’s only January, and the water year isn’t over yet. There's still ample opportunity for the snowpack to develop, but the conditions right now are worrisome.
“What I gather right now is more concerned observation. We’re watching things closely, we’re not necessarily in big trouble yet… but it’s a very careful wait and see,” Duncan said. “If we get to April and it’s still dry, then it’s scary.”
'A top concern’: Ski areas weather tough start, brace for the future
Back at the ski hills, resort managers are also watching the forecast.
Maverick’s Borge said they experienced another level of love from their peers while they waited for enough snow to begin operations.
The offer for their skiers to go to other hills helps Maverick out financially by maintaining the value of their pass, Borge said.
Showdown Mountain spokesperson George Clark-Gold said the decision to share was an easy one. The resort, near Neihart has previously offered a similar deal when mountains were shut down due to power loss. It is, however, a first for them to honor season passes from other mountains due to limited snow.
“It's just heartbreaking,” Clark-Gould said. “Our hearts go out to them and we want to make sure we're making it as easy as possible for them as we wait for more snow.”
When Bridger’s O’Connor saw this move on social media, she immediately suggested to management the resort offer something similar.
“It's not like we have a ton of snow or more than anybody else,” O’Connor said. “But it's just nice to be able to offer that to people to get up and slide around a bit on snow.”
According to a report prepared for the Montana Wildlife Federation, Montana ski resorts could see a 33-day seasonal decrease and struggle to draw non-resident skiers, which currently comprise roughly 40% of ski area visitors in the state. The report estimated a loss of nearly 1,000 jobs and a $35 million annual decrease in labor earnings due to changing climate.
Roughly one-tenth of the state’s GDP stems from snowsports, according to the Department of Labor and Industry. A study from the University of Montana shows the ski industry alone generated $177 million and 1,970 jobs in the 2018-19 season.
“Climate change is a top concern for ski area operators and owners around the world,” O’Connor said. “The conversation is constantly there.”
Still, these dry early seasons are not entirely unheard of — Zwang said Libby has experienced similar winters going back all the way to the 1960s. In 2004, the mountain was only open for four days and other seasons have also seen opening dates in the first or second week of January.
“We'll just regroup and basically look at what we have to do and what we need to do to get open for next year. We are positioned very well to ride these kinds of winters out,” he said.
Turner’s dry spell finally ended in the second week of January, giving the resort more than 16 inches of snow, but they still had to postpone opening day further due to blisteringly cold temperatures predicted for the weekend of Jan. 12-14.
“Mother Nature won’t give us a break,” Zwang said.