The Stash: Mother Nature took California’s snow, are other states taking the skiers?

California has now seen four consecutive winters of low snow and high temps: the most recent winter being the warmest and driest of the bunch. But what effect has this had on the behavior of the state’s skiers? More specifically, are they showing up at resorts in other states in greater numbers than they used to? Here’s what we found.

The Goods
We looked at almost a dozen resorts in the Rocky Mountains to find how many skiers from California were booking lodging during the winter season. We started by finding total numbers to see if, sheerly on volume, more of these skiers were showing up at resorts in Colorado, Utah, and Wyoming each year.

Sure enough, the number of total Californians skiing at these resorts grew steadily after a slight drop in 2011/12. But to account for any seasons where all visitation was up, we also ran these numbers as a percentage of total guests.

In this case, last year’s winter clearly stands out as these states saw Californians make up a 11.4% of all reservations. This figure was up from 9.0% in 2010/11 and 8.4% in 2013/14.

What This Means
While the first chart suggests that more skiers will leave the state during a low snow year, the second hints that a terrible winter alone may not be enough. Instead, snow levels might have to drop below a certain level of terrible before they do.

After all, the first three bad winters saw little to no change in Californians showing up elsewhere as a percentage of total skiers. It wasn’t until 2014/15 – a really bad winter – that this number finally spiked.

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