This coverage is made possible in part through a partnership between IPR and Ground materiala nonprofit environmental media organization.
This week, IPR examined how some small businesses in northern Michigan rely on snow and how they are affected by warm winters.
On Tuesday we heard about loans from a federal aid program that is used during droughts where all the money in our region went.
Yesterday, we examined a legislative effort expand this program by making low snowfall a separate type of disaster. This would help companies in the short term.
Today we're hearing about longer-term solutions to deal with increasingly unreliable winter weather, including efforts to crack down on fossil fuels.
IPR's Tyler Thompson spoke with Claire Keenan-Kurgan and Izzy Ross.
Thompson: Izzy, let's start with you. At the end of your story yesterday you told us how Mt. Holiday in Traverse City is expanding its offerings. Why is that?
Horse: That's right. You don't want to rely solely on cold, snowy winters. They focus on activities in the other three seasons. So there is a beer garden and there is a sauna in the parking lot.
And it's not just Mt. Holiday. Brad Garmon works for the state Office of the Outdoor Recreation Industry. He says strategies will include developing and promoting things like hiking and mountain biking – things that require planning.
Garmon (recorded audio): “There are ways we can monitor and adjust. We just need to be a little more flexible when things move from snowmobiles to ATVs or something like that, and when we can do it safely and continue to maintain control of the resource well in the long term.
Garmon used Boyne Mountain as an example: them built a wooden suspension bridge – a skybridge – a few years ago so people could walk through the landscape and admire it.
Keenan Kurgan: Yes, I actually saw that last weekend!
Horse: Some northern Michigan ski resorts actually did well last year as well – but these were generally larger resorts that had the ability to snow more efficiently and, frankly, make more money.
It's not easy – sometimes warming temperatures on the Great Lakes can actually cause Lake Effect Snow to become more intense. However, the point here is that everything is harder to predict and potentially more extreme, including years without snow.
Thompson: And it's not just the Midwest that's dealing with unpredictable winters. Claire, you have reached out to a few other states outside of the Midwest. What did they do to warm the winters?
Keenan Kurgan: I did that. Another region where this type of problem is really felt is the Northeast. Snowy areas in the mountains of the West and West Coast are typically at higher elevations and may be less affected by temperature fluctuations.
Who got what?
Check out our interactive map to see where federal loans went last year.
But when I spoke with tourism boards in the Northeast, some staff members were quite surprised about the loan programs in the Upper Midwest that we reported on earlier this week. They did not have access to the programs that businesses in parts of Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota had access to after light snowfall.
In Vermont, they gained access to federal disaster loans after severe summer flooding, but not for lack of snowfall.
A tourism official told me that companies like ski resorts are simply blowing more snow and investing in snow guns for the slopes.
And in Western New York, there was no financial support for snow-dependent businesses like we saw here in Michigan, even though there were some of the same weather conditions as the Great Lakes.
Thompson: This leads us to a different approach. In your reporting, Claire, you've seen some groups target fossil fuels at the policy and legislative levels.
Keenan Kurgan: Yes, I became interested in a group called Protect our Winters. They are a climate lobbying group originally founded by professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones. And they are trying to mobilize the so-called snow sports industry to address climate change at a legislative level. So they lobby against fossil fuels, basically on behalf of the snow sports industry, and they go to Congress and lobby for environmentally friendly legislation.
I asked their CEO, Erin Sprague, about the small business loans available in Michigan. She said they support anything that boosts the local snow economy, but that it's a defensive measure to address the problems that are already here due to climate change, and she says she's also happy to go on the offensive go:
Sprague (recorded audio): “We want to go upstream and ask: What is the root of the problem in all this? And one of the parts of climate that's one of the hardest things – climate, for example, is a very solvable problem. That’s one of the areas.” That gives me a lot of hope. However, to make progress we need to change the way we as humans heat and cool our homes, the way we travel, the way we consume energy. So POW's work tends to focus on fossil fuels and limiting fossil fuel use.
Keenan Kurgan: They advocated for the Inflation Reduction Act in Washington, which invested in other forms of energy in addition to fossil fuels. And for them that means supporting industries that rely on snow.
Horse: Yes, and I'll just add that we're seeing outdoor recreation groups getting involved in a lot of debates about development and energy – this dynamic has actually been going on for a long time – and that the organizers, in turn, want to bring together outdoor enthusiasts to take action against development or include them in this debate.
One example is the Copperwood Mine in the Upper Peninsula, which is near the Porcupine Mountains Wilderness State Park and the popular North Country Trail. Groups like Backcountry Hunters and Anglers have spoken out against this development. And this also applies elsewhere in the country.
