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It was pure luck, but we couldn't have timed this last week any better. It started snowing in the mountains around Salt Lake City on Tuesday, and it felt like it didn't stop until Saturday. On Wednesday morning, which was peak powder, the main resorts were reporting anywhere between 23" and 30" of fresh now. It was the stuff of magical dreams.
But snowfall is, of course, highly variable. SLC is having a record year, whereas many resorts in Europe weren't able to open until mid-January because of a lack of snow. And from a macro perspective, things are generally getting worse. According to this report, for every one degree increase in the world's average temperature, global snow cover is reduced by about 8%.
What this mean is that, even in low emission scenarios, many of the places that previously hosted the Winter Olympics, may struggle to do so again in the future because of "non-reliable" snow cover. Freestyle ski and snowboard, for example, typically wants a minimum of 1 meter of snowpack as a base, and sometimes more if melting is expected.
Things do not look positive for Vancouver, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, and even Chamonix in the below chart. (And as a further blow, the authors of the report also don't know how to spell Vancouver.) Naturally, this is something that you might want to consider when looking at long-term investments that are dependent on fresh snow.
You can, however, ignore Sochi in the above chart. Because this was never a great place for the Winter Olympics and it's unclear to me why this place was ever chosen (other than for presumably nefarious reasons). It's like: "We are one of the largest and coldest countries in the world. We have a lot of snow in Russia. But for fun, let's choose one of the few places with a sub-tropical climate."
Excluding Sochi, though, this is an alarming chart.
The 2018 Winter Olympics start this Friday, February 9 in PyeongChang, South Korea. Unlike the past couple of winter games, which struggled with warm temperatures, this should be a cold one.
The Winter Olympics tend to be less popular than the Summer Olympics, with fewer athletes and countries participating. 207 countries participated in the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, but only 88 countries participated in the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. A big part of this has to do with the fact that winter sports generally require winter and snow and not every country has those things.
I like the Winter Olympics. And perhaps not surprisingly, my favorite sport is snowboarding. This year I’m really rooting for Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris. If you don’t know who Mark is, watch this short video. He has had a tough time over the years with a number of serious injuries, but he managed to bounce back and qualify for the Olympics. He won bronze in Sochi and is hungry for gold.
The Olympics are always a good reminder that if you want to be the best, you’re going to have to be prepared to work beyond hard and make many many sacrifices in your life. And even then, there are absolutely no guarantees.
So what’s your favorite Olympic winter sport?
There are many reasons why one might want to host the Olympics. Brand building is certainly one. Making some kind of profit is another. But the direct economic benefits aren't always clear. Embedded above are two recent charts from the WSJ outlining 1) the cost of the Olympic Games over the years (the exact numbers are likely debatable) and 2) some of the overruns that host cities have seen. Montreal stands out as an unfortunate outlier with cost overruns exceeding 700%. And Tokyo stands out as being the most expensive games ever. As I understand it, the economics are challenging in the best of times. So one can only imagine what kind of dent the Tokyo Olympics might leave behind.
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