It Snowed in August. So What?

The time has come. Resorts throughout North America received their first dustings of snow this month, including destinations like Palisades Tahoe, Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, and Whitefish Mountain Resort. Predictably, they—alongside several snowsports news outlets, ourselves included—widely broadcasted the news. Many people like to see snow, especially in August.

The brief excitement doesn’t guarantee the resorts that saw snow will experience better conditions when winter arrives. And, by now, the webcams continent-wide look more seasonally appropriate—green. Summer’s returned for the time being, and nothing has really changed. The recent storm was just that then—an irregular flash of winter against the backdrop of a gradually hotter, less snowy world.

For skiers, though, an important milestone has been surpassed. Year after year, whether it happens in August, September, or October, those first flakes are always a big deal.

Skiing is almost a religion. We closely observe buoys and arguably sketchy long-term forecasts, pinning our mental well-being to the outcomes of difficult-to-predict climatic patterns. In this shuffle, that first snow is a true event. It signals an ending and a beginning. Weather apps, once dull, become engaging or, in my case, addicting. Ski resort webcams play a similar role. Things get weirder in the gear closet, where the skis start whispering like the Green Goblin suit in Spiderman . “Remember me?” they ask. “You thought you were into stand-up paddle boarding. Really? Not for long, pal. Time to get the waxing iron out.”

There are other traditions—pond skims, big World Cup races, freeride competitions—although they don’t have the same impact. Pond skims, for instance, are a farewell, promising a last send-off before summer begins, and we all forget about skiing, albeit temporarily. A dusting atop the peaks of our favorite mountains contains a different broadcast: there’s an entire winter’s worth of skiing just around the corner.

That’s pretty unique. Surfers have waves, but those tend to ebb and flow year-round. There isn’t a definite wave that indicates surfing, for the next few months, is on. Skiing, in contrast, has more rigid starting and ending dates. So do baseball and football, but those are a bit more arbitrary. With snowsports, a whirl of meteorological mechanisms is the primary arbiter, even if modern snowmaking techniques are getting better and better at defying Mother Nature. It’s almost like a magic trick.

This year, that moment came earlier than usual. This might’ve overshadowed the first’s snow traditional role, as it’s a bit too soon to really start frothing over skiing. Depending on where you live, the ski season is still a ways out. No materially significant snowstorms are coming anytime soon—barring another unusual happening—and I probably won’t find myself repeatedly checking NOAA for a few weeks or months.

But I—and maybe you—have still been slightly jolted from my summery mindset. On my afternoon jogs, I’m thinking about skiing, probably more so than I would have had the snow waited longer to arrive, and what this season might contain is now the stuff of occasional daydreams. The new lines, the sudden storms, the road trips, the discoveries, the old friends—all of these fantasies, which may or may not pan out, are triggered by something that, in the grand scheme of things, is so small. All it takes is a few damp flakes of snow.

Related: “We Didn’t Have This on Our Bingo Card.” Montana Ski Areas See Summer Snow

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