Mild Winter Weather Leaves Europe's Ski Slopes Barren

This was the scene that greeted vacationers hoping to ski on Bjelasnica Mountain, near Sarajavo, on January 5.

 

Further north, in the Bosnian resort town of Vlasic, the situation looked similar, with crunchy patches of ice on ski fields usually puffy with snow at this time of year.

A stony ski field on Bjelasnica on January 4.

Record high winter temperatures have been recorded recently in countries across Europe, including Bosnia, Belarus and Hungary, giving some relief for Europeans struggling with heating bills but leaving skiers high and dry.

A ski slope created with snow machines near a ski resort in Romania’s western Hunedoara County. The image was published by the Complex Montana ski resort on January 1. 

The terrace of a ski hotel in Vlasic on January 3.

Snow shortages have also been reported across Western Europe and in Bulgaria.
 

Photographer Olga Revenko is on holiday with her family in Bansko, a ski town in Bulgaria. She told RFE/RL that, due to a lack of snow, the slopes there currently have only one track open and most of the activity is limited to “small flat areas where beginners and children are taught to ride.”

Closed ski stalls in Bjelasnica on January 5. Business owners on the slopes in Bosnia say that, with little to do on the mountains, many visitors have packed up and left early in recent days.

A mostly snowless ski center in Bjelasnica on January 5.  

Dino Korugic, a manager of a hotel in Vlasic, Bosnia, told AP, “Right now, when we should be welcoming skiers on our mountain, we have no snow, so there is no doubt that our business will falter.”

Tourists making use of the ski lifts in Bjelasnica on January 5. Weather forecasts into the middle of January for the Bosnian mountains predict temperatures will remain around 0 degrees Celsius, with only a light dusting of snow.