In the years that followed I dug a pit in that same spot many more times, but never again did that much snow pile up. One to two metres, sometimes around three, depending on the winter. That was the usual mass of snow you had to shovel away before the blade ruffled the blueberry bushes at the very bottom. But we're talking about leeward slopes here, where snow driven across the ridges by the wind settles in greater quantities. On the windward slopes there's barely half a metre of cover. So what next? Will it get even worse? Is this the end of the good old Czech winter, with the modern version represented by a white strip set into green hillsides as proof of human vanity (and futility)?
Maybe not entirely. We'll still get snowdrifts, apparently. "But they'll be considerably rarer than we've been used to. Warmer and drier winters will prevail," climatologist Pavel Zahradníček from CzechGlobe – the Global Change Research Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences – told the news site iRozhlas in January this year.
The bitter taste of last (non-)winter meant that from mid-February my skis never left the gloom of a garage corner, and a spider began spinning its web between their tips. Even the Lesser Caucasus was languishing without snow at the time. Had the heavens not sent down, like a gift from God, a saving thirty centimetres of sparkling white treasure just before we arrived in mountain-locked Hermon, we'd have spent our days sitting by the stove with Sirak, a big-nosed Armenian hunter, washing down sour pickled vegetables with vodka. As it was, the spirits of the Caucasus took pity on us after all, spared us the headache that goes with a fermenting stomach and generously let us draw our two parallel lines on the hills above the abandoned villages. Even though the way down meant weaving between thorny stalks poking above the snow cover, long enough to tug at your trouser legs. Not to mention the geological variety of the ground underneath. Snow never made it to Goris, though – a small town at 1,600 metres above sea level in the easternmost corner of Armenia. The mountains rising beyond the last shabby cottage looked like a bundt cake with a diet-friendly dusting of sugar.
That ski trip was a flop. And there were no others that year. Not even on the Jeseníky ridges behind the house. At home – in Malá Morávka, 700 metres above sea level – there were a few decent snowfalls, but they were followed by decent downpours too. Snow turned to rain. Fresh powder into squelching slush. There was no point – not on that nothing.
When I call up from my childhood memories those heaps of snow my parents used to throw me into, where we dug bunkers and deep trenches around that very same house at 700 metres, until Grandad came running out with his fist raised, threatening "Krucaj faja!" and demanding to know where his wooden planks were – planks meant for an entirely different purpose than serving as our bunker roof – I do think winters aren't what they used to be. True, I was smaller and everything around me was bigger. And besides, "thinking" means knowing jack, as someone with life experience much like my Grandad's once put it. So these days, instead of assumptions, I look for facts.
"The cause of climate change is most likely the intensification of the atmosphere's natural greenhouse effect as a result of human activity and the excessive increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions."
So says the website of the Czech Ministry of the Environment, under the Climate Protection and Energy tab. Economist Professor Václav Klaus, however, claims in an article published on 3 December 2019 on www.klaus.cz: "Nothing extraordinary has happened to the climate this year or in recent years, yet climate activists – people who have built their political careers on the threat that the climate will destroy us unless they get their way – are organising a frontal attack against us right now."
Are these facts? Or mere opinions? For precise historical measurement data, you can click through to the website of the Czech Hydrometeorological Institute: "In 1861–1910 the average annual temperature was 9.1 °C, in 1911–1960 9.6 °C and in 1961–2010 10.4 °C." And further on you'll find: "In connection with the changing temperature regime, the average number of days with high temperatures is also gradually increasing and the average number of days with low temperatures is decreasing." That's measured data – facts that can't be disputed. And to come back to Professor Klaus: the frog in the enamel pot didn't notice the water gradually warming around it either. And by the time it dawned on it, after a long spell of indifference, that its little legs were starting to smell delicious, a hungry Frenchman was already drooling over the hob.
The planet's climate is warming – that's a fact. And human activity is speeding the process up. Most scientists – climatologists – agree on that, and the most important body presenting the results of climate change research is the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, founded in 1988 by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). Economists and CEOs of ever-growing corporations, on the other hand, tend to hold the opposite view – nothing remarkable is happening. Why? And who's right?
"Considerably less snow falls and it rains more. The number of days with a classic mountain winter, with higher snowfall and deeper snow cover, is dropping significantly. Over the last twenty years by roughly 35 per cent."
That's what climatologist Pavel Zahradníček also said on iRozhlas. But maybe you don't even need to know what climatologists think. Would ski resorts keep adding more and more snow cannons, with ever better technology able to make snow even at temperatures around zero, if nothing were happening? People used to ski on natural snow – I remember that. And yes, winter always had its whims, like in the 1970s when people went out in shorts on New Year's Eve, only for the temperature to drop by almost 30 °C overnight. But are these still whims today, or a longer-term trend?
Will the Czech winter disappear?
If nothing changes, the data suggest that snow-covered roofs and the chill of snow melting down your neck will be things we only reminisce about, watching Bohumil Hanč, Gustav Anděl and Viki Cabadaj on screen. But then what to make of this year's first snow, which as early as 12 October disturbed the quiet life of the spider living between my ski tips and forced it to look for a new home? A lovely 20 centimetres of snow. I'd missed it so much. It has soaked back into the ground again, but how should I see it? As a sign of better days ahead, or a demonstration of a climate gone wild? The coming winter will probably give us a hint. But whatever it turns out like, the ball will stay in our court. I'm off to think about what to do with that responsibility
