ESPN Snowboarding

So here's what we do know: people can enhance a cloud's ability to produce snow by a technology known as "cloud seeding," an in-exact but consciously initiated science. As you might guess, human impact on winter weather happens all the time, with or without our intention.

But here's what we are just learning: a recent report from Britain highlights the first of three futurama scenarios, where industrial actions are inadvertently causing winter snow weirdness.

The first: Scientists in the UK are now claiming that industrial emissions from smokestacks are causing snowfall in weather conditions that would otherwise produce zero of the white flakes. This strange snow produced from freezing fog falls as needle-shaped formations called "snow grains" -- not the typical flakes we are familiar with.

Technically termed an "anthropogenic snowfall event," scientists are saying that emissions from the smokestacks provide the catalyst necessary for water particles in fog to transform into ice, and then into actual snow. The trouble for these unsuspecting areas in England is that the snowfall comes totally unpredicted, without storm fronts or clouds, catching towns off guard and creating potentially hazardous and slippery driving conditions. These freak events have also been reported in Fairbanks, Alaska.

And while the impact of these events have up to this point been localized in relatively small areas, the second study in question has a much broader -- and grim -- outlook.

In the first undertaking of it's kind, a January 2008 Department of Energy Pacific Northwest National Laboratory study claimed that pollution soot is causing snowpacks to melt as much as a month early. Essentially, a blanket of pollution soot that falls on the snow is much darker than the underlying snow, and absorbs the sun's energy and causes premature heating and melting. For snowboarders, a shrinking snowpack is the ultimate warning sign, and with snow runoff a primary water source for farmers and hydropower interests, among others, it's a broad and deep concern.

The third twist is that dust, caused by global warming dryness, is essentially causing the same pre-mature melting, an issue that global warming awareness and action organization Protect Our Winters has taken seriously enough to help fund a Center for Snow and Avalanche Studies research project on the issue.

Weird, yes, but these are true examples of pollution and global warming's unpredictable effect on snowfall and snowpacks that shredders count on; for POW and other eco-minded shredders, it's just more reason to curb emissions while we still can.

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