Tug Hill winters are getting warmer, and more unpredictable
The Tug Hill Plateau is known for its winters. It’s the snowiest populated place east of the Mississippi. Snowmobilers flock there, bringing in about $80 million a year.
New data compiled by the Tug Hill Commission finds climate change is altering those winters, often in unpredictable ways.
A snowy field in Boylston on the Tug Hill Plateau. Photo: Katie Malinowski / Tug Hill Commissions
The report analyzes fifty years of data from four weather stations across the Tug Hill Plateau: Lowville, Bennets Bridge, Boonville, and Highmarket. It found air temperatures are getting warmer at all four locations. Snowfall is decreasing at the two of them, while remaining mostly unchanged at the two others.
David SommersteinTug Hill winters are getting warmer, and more unpredictable
Jillian Lee is a hydrologist and a project manager for the Tug Hill Commission. She told David Sommerstein last winter’s heavy snowfall, compared with the warm and dry winter the year before, is a prime example of the unpredictability of Tug Hill winters going forward. Their conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.
JILLIAN LEE: As you know, the Tug Hill region is drastically impacted by lake effect snow. And so when you have warmer air temperatures, [Lake Ontario] will stay warmer, and then you may have that cold air mass move over the lake. But if the temperatures are warm enough, you might not get the snow. But if they are cool enough, then maybe you will get more snow.
So I wish that we could pinpoint exactly what would happen and how to help our communities prepare exactly for what they need. I think that going forward, everyone will need to have an open mind about what could be, and maybe have backup plans as far as recreation events, planning ahead for different types of ways to still bring in tourists that enjoy the snowmobiling and those types of things, but just have those backup options as well.
DAVID SOMMERSTEIN: One thing I thought that was really interesting in this study is I think you were trying to educate readers on climate change, on what the difference is between weather and climate change. Why is that an important part of this report?
LEE: I think the words ‘climate change’ are thrown around a lot. Sometimes it’s used in ways that aren’t quite correct, and then there are other times that the term ‘weather’ isn’t used correctly as well. So we were trying to bridge that gap and provide an explanation of what is ‘weather’, what is ‘climate’, and what is ‘climate change’.
SOMMERSTEIN: We know from political data that the Tug Hill is a heavily Republican, conservative area. Is it hard to talk about climate change on the Tug Hill?
LEE: I wouldn’t say it’s extremely difficult. I think that sometimes the words ‘climate change’ are politicized in a way that we have to make sure that, like through this paper, we’re getting across the facts. We don’t have a political agenda. The Tug Hill Commission, we’re Switzerland. We are here to help our communities. We are here to educate them. And so when we talk with people within the Tug Hill region, one of the best ways to communicate with residents is to relate it to how they’re being affected. Are their buildings and their towns collapsing? Are they experiencing economic changes as the winters change? Are they noticing things that maybe they didn’t notice 30 years ago?
And this isn’t just entirely the Tug Hill region. This helps with a lot of regions as well. It’s important to be able to relate it to them, to how they’re affected in their backyard.
Winter in Lowville. Photo: Mickey Dietrich / Tug Hill Commission
SOMMERSTEIN: The report lays out what you found as far as data, but it doesn’t say a lot about policy considerations and what people should do with that data. So, given that your audience is Tug Hill residents, but also town board people, village council people, county lawmakers, what do you want them to do with this information?
LEE: First and foremost, the base understanding is definitely needed. And then from there, one helpful thing would be if towns are working on their comprehensive plans, thinking about road construction, highway superintendents, having them think about roads, thinking about their buildings and if they’re not only up to code but are up to withstanding snowfall like we received this past year.
This paper is a really good base for us to move forward and start actually looking into more information — an analysis on the snowpack, the number of days above and below freezing, and then going into spring and summer, looking at the air temperatures and looking at rainfall patterns including the intensity, the frequency, and if there are any indicators of drought even. There are a lot of opportunities and a lot of different directions that we can go forward from here as well to help the residents of the Tug Hill region understand what’s going on.
NCPR’s climate change series is made possible through the generous support of Margot and John Ernst. You can find all the stories in our series at ncpr.org/climate.