You Were Never Selling Snow

The winter of 2025–26 was the one the West would rather forget.

Across the country, ski areas logged roughly 53 million visits, down from 61.6 million the season before.¹ Average snowfall at U.S. resorts came in at 112 inches, a third below the ten-year average.¹ The Colorado Sun called it the second-largest one-season decline in the history of the resort industry.²

In the Rockies, visits fell from 26.5 million to 20.1 million.² Colorado resorts logged about 10.5 million visits, their fewest since 1991–92.^{3, 19} Eight western states set record lows for April 1 snowpack.⁴ One Oregon ski area managed 17 days of skiing all season.⁵

That’s the headline everyone remembers.

The more useful story is underneath it.

Same winter, different outcomes

The Northeast was up, to 12.9 million visits from 12.5 million.² The Southeast was up too.² Up in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Marquette recorded its second-snowiest season on record.⁶ Boyne Mountain was still running lifts in mid-May.⁷

So “the weather” wasn’t one story. It never is.

Even inside the hardest-hit region, results didn’t just follow the snow report.

Monarch, a small Colorado ski area, saw visits drop to 172,300, down from more than 200,000 in recent seasons. It also sold more season passes than ever before, drew record revenue, and had its busiest day ever in December. Owner Bob Nicolls summed up the year this way: “Net income was our third highest ever.”²

Vail Resorts’ skier visits in its February–April quarter fell 15.5%. Its lift revenue fell only about 5%.⁸ The Colorado Sun’s explanation was simple: selling passes “before the snow flies — or in this season’s case, did not fly” had “largely immunized” the company “to the whims of winter.”²

The independent Indy Pass sold out its 2026–27 public sale in 37 minutes, after the worst western season in decades.⁹ Its director explained why: “People want affordability, they want independence, and they want a more authentic experience.”⁹

Read those three together and a pattern shows up.

The businesses that held up best weren’t selling a day of conditions.

They were selling a relationship.

When you sell conditions, the weather writes your marketing plan

Here’s how a lot of weather-exposed outdoor businesses market. I don’t mean just ski areas. I mean outfitters, guides, shops, rental fleets and event organizers too.

Fresh snow → post it.

River’s running → post it.

Bluebird day → post it.

Conditions are thin → go quiet and wait.

It works in a good year. And it quietly teaches your customers something dangerous: the reason to come is the conditions.

So when conditions aren’t there, neither are they.

If your marketing sells powder, you’ve handed your revenue to the jet stream.

But almost nobody drives three hours with their family for the snow itself. They come for what the snow makes possible. A first run with their kid. A standing weekend with the same friends every February. Being outside when everyone else is stuck inside. The feeling of being good at something hard.

Those reasons don’t melt.

This isn’t a one-off

It’s tempting to treat 2025–26 as a freak year and wait for the rebound. NSAA’s president made the fair point that “a lower-snow season is often followed by a strong rebound.”¹⁰

Maybe so. But the longer trend isn’t subtle.

Researchers Daniel Scott, Robert Steiger and colleagues found that U.S. ski seasons in 2000–2019 were already 5.5 to 7.1 days shorter than in 1960–1979. They estimate that cost the industry more than $5 billion. By the 2050s, they project seasons 14 to 33 days shorter under low-emissions scenarios and 27 to 62 days shorter under high ones.¹¹

You don’t have to settle a climate debate to read that as a business planning assumption.

And this winter won’t necessarily bail anyone out. NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center gives a greater than 90% chance of a very strong El Niño this fall and winter.¹² Its seasonal outlook favors above-normal temperatures west of the Rockies and across the northern tier, including the Great Lakes, with modest tilts toward below-normal precipitation in parts of the Great Lakes and the interior Northwest.¹³

That’s a probability, not a promise. But if you’re a Midwest business counting on lake-effect to carry you again, it’s worth planning for the other version of the season too.

What to change before the first flake

None of this requires a bigger budget. It requires deciding what you’re actually selling, and then saying it before the season decides for you.

Sell the reason, not the report. Go back through last season’s posts and emails. Count how many are about conditions and how many are about why people come. If conditions win, flip the ratio. Tell stories about the family tradition, the Tuesday-night crew, the kid who finally linked turns. Conditions can be the news. They shouldn’t be the promise.

Build commitment before the season starts. The clearest lesson from last winter is that customers who committed early (passes, memberships, punch cards, clubs, lesson packages) kept businesses steady when the weather didn’t. At the start of last season, Vail expected about 74% of its skier visits to come from customers who had committed in advance.¹⁴

That commitment gets tested after a bad winter. Through mid-September, Vail’s pass sales for this season were down about 12% in units and 6% in dollars, and the company said the drop “may reflect delayed purchase behavior among less committed guests.”²⁰ The lesson isn’t that passes failed. It’s that the customers with the weakest reason to come are the first to wait and see.

You don’t need a national pass product to build commitment. You need a reason for your best customers to say yes in October.

Write your thin-conditions campaign now. Not in January, when you’re scrambling. Decide today what you’ll say, and what you’ll offer, when the snow or water or ice doesn’t show up. Maybe it’s lessons, events, the lodge, snowshoeing, a demo day or a skills clinic. Be straight about conditions, because your customers are checking the webcams anyway, and then give them a reason to come regardless. Being honest when it’s bad is what makes people believe you when it’s good.

Give the calendar more than one season. Summer has been a small slice for most resorts. NSAA’s 2022–23 analysis put it at an average of 11.9% of revenue for resorts that offer summer operations.¹⁵ But it can move fast. In an early-August 2026 poll of 31 operators, 45% reported higher summer visitation.¹⁶ In Park City, the early melt opened trails sooner, and May lodging occupancy jumped 22% over the year before.¹⁷

The same goes beyond ski areas. A fishing guide, a paddling outfitter or a bike shop can build a message that doesn’t rise and fall with one weather window.

Watch the water, not just the snow. Low snowpack becomes low rivers. This spring, Lake Powell’s inflow forecast hit a record low of 13% of average.¹⁸ If you run trips on western rivers, you probably felt it this summer. Next summer’s water depends on this winter’s snow, so write your low-water message now, while you have time to make it good.

The one thing you do control

Every weather-exposed business is going to have bad seasons. That part isn’t a strategy problem. It’s geography.

The strategy problem is what your customers believe they’re buying.

If they believe they’re buying conditions, you’ll live and die by the forecast.

If they believe they’re buying the tradition, the community, the challenge and the time together, you’ll still feel a bad winter. But you won’t be at its mercy.

You were never really selling snow.

This is a good fall to make sure your customers know that.

Sources

1. National Ski Areas Association 2025–26 data (preliminary release May 5, 2026: 52.6 million), as reported by SGB Online; later coverage cites “just over 53 million” (SnowBrains, September 11, 2026).
2. Colorado Sun, “US skier visits for 2025-26 fall off a cliff after the winter that wasn’t,” May 5, 2026.
3. Colorado Ski Country USA data via The Gazette, June 4, 2026.
4. Drought.gov snow drought update, April 9, 2026.
5. Powder, on Mt. Ashland’s 2025–26 season.
6. National Weather Service Marquette, via WLUC / Upper Michigan’s Source, April 13, 2026 (274.7 inches).
7. Spectrum News Michigan, May 19, 2026.
8. Vail Resorts, fiscal Q3 2026 results, June 8, 2026.
9. Indy Pass, April 3, 2026 (quote from Erik Mogensen).
10. Michael Reitzell, NSAA president and CEO, quoted in SI Magazin, May 2026.
11. Daniel Scott, Robert Steiger and colleagues, Current Issues in Tourism (2024), as summarized by Snow.news.
12. NOAA Climate Prediction Center, ENSO Diagnostic Discussion, September 10, 2026 (El Niño Advisory).
13. NOAA Climate Prediction Center, 90-day outlook discussion, September 17, 2026.
14. Vail Resorts, fiscal Q1 2026 results and season pass update, December 10, 2025.
15. NSAA 2022–23 economic analysis, cited in SAM Magazine, “The State of Summer Operations”, January 2025.
16. SAM Magazine mid-summer 2026 operator poll (31 operators).
17. KPCW, June 22, 2026.
18. Drought.gov snow drought update, May 14, 2026.
19. Post Independent (“lowest in more than 35 years… since the 1991-92 season”).
20. Vail Resorts, fourth quarter and full-year fiscal 2026 results, September 28, 2026 (pass product sales through September 18, 2026 vs. September 19, 2025).