BOISE, Idaho – Summer is settling in at the Bogus Basin ski area, where people ride chair lifts up the mountains to catch a break from the capital city’s triple-digit heat.
The ski area’s manager, Brad Wilson, is thinking about snow. He has millions of gallons of it stored under a white insulating tarp at the base of a mountain, and if the coming winter is anything like last year’s, he’s going to need it — badly.
That’s because Idaho, like much of the West, saw so little snow last winter that ski areas shut weeks early and the hillsides dried out from the lack of a normal snowmelt. The forecast of a strong El Niño this year may only add to the worries, as the National Weather Service said it’s likely to mean a warmer, drier winter ahead in Idaho and other parts of the region.
“We closed March 22 this year, and there was no snow,” Wilson said Wednesday. Normally, the snowpack lasts til May, as the ski area’s 220-plus inches of annual snowfall gradually melts. “That’s the kind of year it was. Hopefully, that was a one-off.”
