Winter businesses grappling with unseasonably warm weather, lack of snow in Edmonton | CBC News

It’s rare for Edmonton to have seen minimal snowfall and daytime highs above 0 C in early December. And businesses that rely on cold, snowy weather say the unusual weather pattern has hurt their bottom line. 

At the Edmonton Ski Club, the unseasonably warm weather has made it challenging for the club to fully open to the public. 

The club is reliant on artificially made snow with snow guns to operate. In previous years, the club’s four snow guns coupled with below-freezing temperatures were sufficient to keep the hills running. 

None of the four snow guns are operating right now due to the warmer-than-normal temperatures, said Zoe Sloan, general manager of the Edmonton Ski Club.

“We currently have one lift open and we are working hard to get our other lifts open, but without the cold weather windows it is creating delays,” Sloan said to CBC News.  

Temperatures need to be colder than –4 C for the ski club to make snow. Ideally the -10 C and -12 C range is where the club is able to produce snow with all four guns at maximum volume. 

But those temperatures have been hard to come by so far. 

What makes this year so unusual is that Edmonton is experiencing an El Niño weather pattern. 

El Niño is associated with the warming of the Pacific Ocean, which warms the atmosphere above it, and can lead to unusual weather patterns across the globe.

Last month, Alberta saw the driest November on record in 140 years, said Alysa Pederson, a meteorologist for Environment and Climate Change Canada. 

The last time Edmonton recorded having zero precipitation was in 1886. 

“It’s a pretty rare situation,” Pederson said.

The average temperature high around the end of November into early December is around – 4.5 C. But Edmonton’s mean temperature, a combination of the high and low combined through the month, was 0.8 C. 

“We were above zero for the entire month of November except for two days, and those two days were Nov. 30 last week and Nov. 22 where we were just below freezing,” Pederson said. 

In what is usually a busy start to a season for snow removal companies, Gary Hunt, owner of Helpful Guys based in Sherwood Park, has seen a 50 per cent decline in people requesting his services to clear residential properties.

“This warm weather has affected us at a time of the year where nobody needs to be affected,” Hunt said. 

“It’s Christmas season and it’s the last part of the year, which is really important to all the workers.”