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CABLE, Wis. — This year, it seemed like an apparition: Hundreds of skiers gliding through pine and birch forests here in Wisconsin’s Northwoods. The 50th year of the world-famous American Birkebeiner race, inspired by a 13th-century Norwegian war tale, was under way — against the odds and a bit slushier than usual.

Organizers spent days earlier spreading 1,100 truckloads of artificial snow across brown slopes — possible only with $600,000 worth of snow-making equipment installed after an ill-timed February thaw canceled the race in 2017. During what has been a lost winter for the Upper Midwest, it brought a rare taste of normalcy to a place where thriving through frigid temperatures is a point of pride and a way of life.

But otherwise, this season’s extremes are impossible to ignore across the Northwoods: Snowless ground so muddy, you’d think it was April. Lake ice too thin to support pickup trucks, if even ice fishers themselves. Empty snowmobiling trails. Bars and hotels desperate for visitors.

The harshness of a typical winter is “what makes living here great,” Marty Wiitala, a 59-year-old from Minneapolis, said after crossing the Birkie finish line. “You’ve got to figure out how to make winter fun.”

Nicole Neri

It could<i> </i>mean a mental health boost and a salve for “shack wacky” winter blues, at least. Cold weather-related deaths are down, and there are hopes of an extended summer tourism season. But for the many Minnesotans, Wisconsinites and Michiganders confronting the mildest winter they’ve ever experienced, the realities of fast-warming winter temperatures and markedly declining ice cover are becoming difficult to ignore. On the heels of a massive snowfall last winter, it portends an unpredictable future — and a loss of the sorts of winters Midwesterners have come to know.

“There are some people that say this is going to be the new normal,” said Debra Croft, a 63-year-old resident of Carlton, Minn., who skied in the 18-mile Kortelopet event Feb. 21. She was thrilled the race went on as scheduled, even if just on a six-mile loop.

Sunday’s marquee American Birkebeiner Classic race would normally have been a 34-mile sojourn through bone-chilling winds from Cable to Hayward, Wis. But Croft said she can remember years where lacking snow and ice meant the racecourse was cut short, or redirected from a picturesque finish on Hayward’s Main Street.

As joyful as this year’s event was for Croft, a veteran of 11 full Birkies and a dozen Kortelopets, a shorter event alongside the Birkie, the thought of missing out on more of them is almost too much to bear: “That would not be a good year.”

This part of northern Wisconsin, like the tundra of northern Minnesota or Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, is normally a winter playground for people from across the region, if not the country.

Around communities like Rhinelander, home of a mythical creature known as the Hodag, or the lakeside town of Minocqua, arrow-shaped signposts point the way to family cabins and summer campgrounds. Networks of trails normally carry snowmobiles to remote bars, breweries and restaurants.

But without the trappings of a winter wonderland, many tourists have stayed home or headed to where snowpack is closer to normal.

“There’s been no good reason to come north,” said Mitch Mode, owner of Mel’s Trading Post, a sporting goods store in Rhinelander.

Hotels, restaurants and hospitality businesses have reported losses of as much as 80 percent of their normal winter sales, said Chris Ruckdaschel, executive director of the Hayward Area Chamber of Commerce.

At Track Side, a snowmobile dealer in Eagle River, Wis., general manager and co-owner Chris Petreikis said the losses could approach $1 million. Some 75 shiny snowmobiles are sitting with zero miles on them, he said.

Any snowbanks that remained one recent afternoon at Minocqua Winter Park, which calls itself Northern Wisconsin’s “snowy paradise,” were thin and confined to shady forest. Some hikers came to visit, but skiing and snowshoeing were impossible. Inside the park’s chalet, rows of brand new ski boots remain pristine, and shiny Rossignol and Fischer skis for sale fill racks on the wall and ceiling.

Normally, Presidents’ Day weekend would have brought a flurry of activity, but the season was confined to a few frosty weeks in December and January.

“It’s like working in a funeral home,” said Dan Clausen, the ski pro minding the quiet shop.

The search for an upside can feel daunting at this point in the season, Clausen said. Fears of more winters like this one are sparking talks of the region investing more heavily in snow-making technology like many ski slopes around Minneapolis have.

Many business owners are looking to a recent announcement by Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers (D) and Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D) that businesses harmed by the mild winter may be eligible for a federal Small Business Administration disaster loan program.

Meanwhile, many are already awaiting the next season. Though winters are intense here, summers last longer, bringing visitors for cabin weekends, fishing trips and bike races from May through October.

James Hoffman was ready for the mental shift as soon as he crossed the Kortelopet finish line. After all, the 60-year-old from Black River Falls, Wis., hasn’t been ice fishing all year and was gearing up for an early March fat-tire bike race with a name apt for this winter’s conditions: the Sweaty Yeti.

Still, it’s not possible for that to make up for the winter losses, many added.

“You can’t give away winter,” Mode said.

‘An exclamation point on a long-term trend’

In Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest, a reputation for erratic weather is well earned: There are no mountains or other geographic features to block the region from intrusions of Arctic air, or from Gulf of Mexico heat and humidity. The Great Lakes help moderate temperatures but can also produce massive lake-effect snows.

In Madison, Wisconsin’s capital in the southern part of the state, temperatures rise into the triple digits in the summer but have never hit 60 degrees in January, said Steve Vavrus, Wisconsin’s state climatologist.

This winter, the icy air that is normally persistent has remained trapped to the north. Weather systems have steered relatively warm and humid air northward, while global atmospheric circulation patterns largely haven’t allowed Arctic airmasses from migrating into the United States.

That has translated to snowfall at less than half of normal across most of Wisconsin and Minnesota, according to data from the Midwest Regional Climate Center. Based on an index the center calculates that factors both temperature and snowfall, this winter has been record-mild across much of Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan.

In the Northwoods, Minocqua’s winter severity index is at about two-thirds of its previous record low, according to the center.

A mild pattern is to be expected when the El Niño global climate pattern is in place, as has been the case since last year. It is associated with warmer-than-average temperatures across the central and eastern Pacific Ocean, and its domino effects include increased odds of mild weather in Wisconsin. Though <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2024/02/08/la-nina-watch-el-nino-demise/" target=_blank>El Niño is fading</a>, its effects are forecast to linger into the spring.

In the background is the fact that temperatures have warmed dramatically since the late 1990s — and winter has warmed the fastest of all the seasons. In the Northwoods, winter has warmed by about three-quarters of a degree each decade since 1980, according to a Washington Post analysis.

“This winter is an exclamation point on a long-term trend,” Vavrus said.

It is the second straight winter of extreme Wisconsin weather, but at the other end of the spectrum. A year ago, parts of the Northwoods were buried under more than 100 inches of snow, over twice their average snowfall.

Those sorts of swings are to be expected as the climate warms, Vavrus said. As temperatures warm, on average, precipitation is becoming more intense because warmer air holds greater moisture.

“We have to adapt not only in a change in the average, but a change in the variability,” Vavrus said. “We have to be prepared for everything.”

On top of the pain of winter’s wane comes questions about how the unprecedented warmth might transform the landscape here. Beyond the ski slopes and snowmobile trails, there are scattered farms and abundant wildlife that are adapted to harsh winters.

On the Great Lakes, there are questions about how important fish species could fare. Ice cover typically protects key whitefish species’ eggs laid on near-shore reefs and also guards shorelines against erosion from battering winter winds, said Scott Sowa, Great Lakes program director for the Nature Conservancy.

In the thousands of inland lakes across the region, impacts are more difficult to predict, potentially helping aquatic life in some spots and making others unlivable because of toxic algae blooms and other disruptions to natural ecology, Sowa added.

Erratic weather has also already made this a challenging season for maple syrup production.

Maple sap starts running when daytime temperatures rise above freezing, but nighttime conditions drop into the 20s — usually helped by thick snow cover. Syrup producers normally expect that around March, but it came much sooner this year.

“Maple sap just does not flow in January in northern Wisconsin, but this year it did,” said Karl Martin, co-owner of Martin and Sons Maple Syrup and dean of extension for the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

Martin and Sons missed out on an estimated 20 percent of this year’s maple sap run because it simply wasn’t ready to collect the early runs from its 4,500 sugar maples south of Rhinelander. For other producers, Martin said, the losses were greater.

Still, there is hope that farmers will be able to adapt as they know how to do, said Rachel LaCount, director of sustainability communications at the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation. A change in weather patterns could always be ahead.

“There’s a lot of winter left,” LaCount said.

It doesn’t feel like that to Upper Midwesterners bewildered by Mother Nature. Across the Great Lakes, this winter’s weather forced the cancellation of so many normal activities: No ice castles at Lake Geneva, Wis. No sturgeon-spearing season in Michigan. Canceled ice fishing tournaments from Minnesota to Wisconsin to Michigan.

Around the Northwoods, the weather is on everyone’s lips — especially as temperatures surged into the 60s in some parts Tuesday, yet another record-setting day this year across Wisconsin. Not everyone is sure it’s a trend.

“If you watch the local news, they say back in the ’20s or ’30s, the record highs were similar,” said Petreikis, the snowmobile dealer. “I think it’s just cyclical.”

The warmth is so dramatic, he added, it even inspires conspiracy theorists, some who suggest it must be proof of the government controlling the weather.

After all, given the massive snows of last winter, it’s not like winter is vanishing, some point out. It’s just that the winters that the Northwoods are used to — reliably icy and snowy — are no longer a sure thing.

“I love winter — I just wish we could go back to a little bit more normal,” “Seeley Dave” said on a recent episode of the “Northwoods Ramble Podcast,” which he co-hosts from a log cabin in Seeley, Wis.

Hopes for one more snowstorm — still possible, if not likely, in this part of the country — are waning as the calendar turns from February to March and  sunshine strengthens. Some snowflakes were forecast across the Northwoods late Tuesday night into early Wednesday as temperatures plunged, but temperatures were forecast to climb quickly back into the 50s in the coming days, some 15 degrees above normal.

“Everyone’s trying to smile and keep upbeat around here,” said Clausen, the Minocqua ski pro. “Right now, it’s not too fun being here.”

It’s not like a tornado, leaving death and destruction in its wake, he said. But for a place built around frigid winters, he added, it is a disaster.

<i>Nicole Neri and Harry Stevens contributed to this report.</i>

Pulitzer Prize finalist for breaking news, 2016

First place for outstanding beat reporting, Society of Environmental Journalists, 2023

University of Maryland at College Park, BA in Journalism

University of Maryland at College Park, Master's of Public Policy

Scott Dance is a reporter for The Washington Post covering extreme weather news and the intersections between weather, climate, society and the environment. He joined The Post in 2022 after more than a decade at the Baltimore Sun.

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Snow and ice are a way of life here. See how a lost winter upended that.

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