I do a lot of nordic skiing and this issue is very salient to me. It is a topic that emerges one way or another in nordic skiing communities. One thing that's

I do a lot of nordic skiing and this issue is very salient to me. It is a topic that emerges one way or another in nordic skiing communities. One thing that's not entirely appreciated all the time is that it's not just the average level or amount of snow that's important, but also the uncertainty around it. In some ways this has become as problematic for me in recent years, not knowing exactly what to expect. I don't want to spend the time preparing gear and traveling to ski trails to find out the condition is poorer than they have indicated, or possibly damage expensive skis. So even if the snow cover is actually fine, if it's become unreliable, it has almost as much effect on my ski behavior. As another example: it tends to be the beginning and end of the seasons that are affected the most so far. Scheduling events becomes a bit tricky: do events get scheduled at a certain point at the end of the season when, if things are good, there's tons of snow, or is that risky because it could have all melted early? There's a lot of things like this that seem to get lost when the discussion is focused on abstract quantities like average temperature (not critiquing the article, just explaining my experience). I used to feel bad that this was someplace effecting our area in particular, that we weren't far enough north or something, almost a sort of "cold climate imposter syndrome". Then one year people in ski forums in a totally different area of the world, where there should be plenty of snow, were having a winter with essentially none. It's a real problem.