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It does not look good for Rosi Schipflinger. The slopes close to her Sonnenberg restaurant in the Austrian resort of Kitzbühel should be white, not a muddy brown.

“Where are the queues for the ski lift?” she says with a glance at the skies that have yet to yield a single snowflake. I’m having to put out deckchairs on my terrace.”

Similar stories are emerging from ski communities across the Alps, where the warmest autumn on record is posing a threat to one of the great European traditions: the pre-Christmas downhill season.

At the same time, with the weak dollar, British ski operators are experiencing a surge in demand for skiing holidays to North America, where snow conditions are said to be the best for 15 years.

Marion Telsnig, spokeswoman for Thomson Ski and Crystal Ski, said: “There has been good snow over there for three weeks, so our holidays there have been selling well.”

In most Alpine countries the first weekend of December usually brings a rush of visitors to the slopes. But now, if climate experts are to be believed, aprés-ski may take on a more ominous meaning. “Within the next 15 years or so it will be impossible to find a continuous snow blanket below 1,500m,” Helga Kromp-Kolb, of the University of Natural Resources in Vienna, says. “In 30 to 40 years ski regions below 2,000m will no longer exist.”

The International Ski Federation reports cancelled races in France, Austria, Switzerland, Norway and Italy because of a lack of snow. This month’s men’s downhill and Super G races at Val d’Isère, a French resort favoured by British skiers, have been scrapped. Not since Thomas Cook introduced ski tourism in the 19th century has there been so much dismay about the weather.

This November was the warmest in Austria since meteorological data was first gathered in 1775. At Cortina, the Queen of the Italian Dolomites, it is as if spring has arrived. At 1,224m midday temperatures are 15C — normal for May.

Alpine communities have coped with warm winter weather before, but this year there is a sense that it could be the beginning of the end of the European skiing experience.

Cold comfort

The US Rockies and British Columbia have had huge falls. Kicking Horse, a resort in Canada, opened a fortnight early this weekend with 12ft of light fluffy snow Source: Patrick Thorne, the Green Resort Guide, www.saveoursnow.com

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