THE mildest winter on record and a shortage of early snow have combined with predictions of still warmer weather in future to raise the question of whether skiing will be possible in European resorts in decades to come.

The forecast this weekend did little to dispel gloom at French ski resorts, which were forced to cancel World Cup events last week. From the Arctic Circle to the Pyrenees, winter tourists looked skywards to ask the same question: where’s the snow?

The mild weather is expected to continue this week, prompting a wave of holiday cancellations that will put a big dent in Alpine winter tourism revenues.

Even in Lapland, normally covered in deep snowdrifts at this time of year, there were piles of slush, a disappointing landscape for numerous British families on “Father Christmas package tours” whose reindeer sleigh rides had to be aborted.

One Swedish resort operator has given notice to 250 employees at Salen because of a lack of snow and holidaymakers consequently changing their plans.

“We’ve given up our skiing idea,” said Emily Weber, a lawyer from Washington DC who had been planning a trip to the Alps with friends but will spend a week in Paris instead. “We heard there’s just so little snow.”

Many lower altitude French resorts were not yet open for skiing or were operating at a fraction of their capacity. It has not even been cold enough in most areas to make artificial snow.

Gérard Brémond, chairman of Pierre & Vacances, a French holiday company, was putting a brave face on it. “The snow will come,” he said. “Then there will be a torrent of bookings.”

Even so, nerves were increasingly on edge in Alpine resorts over the possibility of no snow by Christmas.

“We’re always having to adapt,” said Michel Girandy, head of the tourism office in Val d’Isère. “Snowy Decembers are still more the norm than Decembers without snow. The situation right now is nothing exceptional; it is nothing to panic about.”

Even so, Val d’Isère was having to address its insurers after being obliged to scrap various World Cup skiing races at a loss of £1.2m. Megève cancelled the women’s World Cup slalom because of the bare slopes and La Plagne dropped the Freestyle Skiing World Cup dual moguls.

In the Czech Republic, they had to cancel the World Cup ski jumping competition. “It is critical, not just for the races but for the major impact it will have on the skiing public,” said Atle Skaardal, the event’s director. ()

The conditions coincided with a claim by Austrian meteorologists that the Alps have not been so warm in 1,250 years, and with dire predictions from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) about the future of winter sports.

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