Snow-related businesses make best of bad winter

LEWISTON – John Letourneau of Pine Haven Sno Tubing & Sno Boarding stopped waiting for Mother Nature back in December.

He turned on the snow guns and laid four feet of powder on his sledding hill. Natural snow wasn’t falling back then, and it’s still not.

Snowfall in Maine is running nearly 30 inches behind normal, according to the National Weather Service.

And the lack of snow is taking a heavy toll on some businesses.

“That kind of raises hell with our wallets a little bit,” Letourneau said.

But some whose bottom lines have taken a hit because of the mild winter are taking a positive attitude.

Bob Meyers of the Maine Snowmobile Association said, “As bad as we think we have it, we have more snow than everybody else.”

According to the Northeast River Forecast Center, snow depths in Maine ranged from 10 to 20 inches in most areas this week. Parts of New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island have between zero and one inch on the ground.

Meyers said this winter seems slow coming on the heels of a banner snowmobile season in 2001. He estimated economic benefits from the sledding industry exceeded $300 million for the first time last year.

Portland has received just 21.9 inches of snow this winter, compared to 51.9 inches, at the same time last winter.

The light snowfall has forced ski resorts like Sunday River and Sugarloaf to rely heavily on artificial snow.

Susan DuPlessis, a spokeswoman for Sunday River, said the resort is using different techniques, such as a renovator machine, which churns up snow and adds air, to keep the man-made base powdery.

She said Sunday River is approaching the level of visitors it had last year, and a spokeswoman for Sugarloaf said that resort is meeting targets for visitors thus far.

The light snowfall this winter is part of a weather pattern that caused empty wells and talk of drought during the fall, according to forecaster Bob Marine of the National Weather Service in Gray.

There’s still no snow in the forecast, but Marine has not ruled out big accumulations in March and April.

“We’ve still got a lot of winter to go yet,” he said. “I wouldn’t give up on it yet.”