November snowflakes announce that this winter season in Montenegro could be better than the previous two. However, measurements generated by the Copernicus website, combining satellite data and artificial intelligence, show that the snow cover on Durmitor, Sinjajevina and Bjelasica has been getting shorter in recent years, the snow depth is lower, and the periods without snowflakes are longer. The reason for this is increasingly warmer winters.
"For example, the average January maximum temperature in Žabljak is around 1,2 degrees. For the last four years, every year that temperature has been noticeably higher. We have a fairly large number of days with snow over 30 cm deep, and that is still a height that cannot be said to be suitable for skiing, because it is untrodden snow," says meteorologist Dušan Pavićević.
Increasingly frequent southerly winds, rainy periods and sudden thaws are destroying already prepared trails.
"The financial losses were really big, because last year, you know, we worked for about twenty days, which somehow couldn't meet our needs for functioning for a whole year," said the director of the Montenegrin Ski Resorts, Bojan Medenica.
The consequences are being felt on Durmitor, where the ski resort was closed the season before last. This year, the Durmitor Tourist Center is planning a different scenario, thanks to the long-awaited artificial snowmaking.
"We have enough snow to prepare all the trails and to organize the entire winter season as planned by the end of March 2026," says Marinko Purić, executive director of the Durmitor Tourist Center.
Despite the hopes of tourism workers, trends indicate an inevitable shift in focus from snow to other activities. This is also the case in Kolašin, where the number of tourist visits has fallen by as much as 40 percent over the past two winters. According to the Tourist Organization, ski schools, equipment providers and agencies that depend exclusively on snow are suffering the most. As a result, the tourist offer of the municipality, which is home to two ski resorts, is increasingly shifting to summer activities.
"We strive to be a tourist destination 365 days a year, so the summer seasons are also very good for us. We at the tourism organization try not to depend on snowfall, but people are simply used to coming to Kolašin in the winter because of the snow," says Zorica Milašinović, director of the Kolašin Tourist Board.
The shortage of white snowflakes due to global warming knows no bounds. In North Macedonia, the amount of snow is rapidly decreasing, and extreme precipitation is increasingly occurring in the form of rain, which brings floods and enormous damage.
"If, for example, in November we had snow on Osogovo and Solunska Glava, not to mention the Šar mountain, now there is none. It is the end of November, we have no snow on the mountains. And this clearly shows that the temperature even at higher altitudes is so high that it does not allow snow, firstly, to fall, and secondly, to stay there," says Vasko Zlatkovski, a graduate agricultural engineer and agricultural science expert from Štip.
In addition to economic, experts warn of serious environmental consequences:
"First of all, there is an earlier flowering of mountain flora, which greatly affects their survival, and they are of essential importance in general for maintaining some ecosystem balance. There is also a lack of water levels in certain water systems in the entire mountain complex in Montenegro, on Durmitor, Prokletije, Komovi, Bjelasica, etc., this applies to mountain lakes, rivers, streams, and springs," points out Ivana Vojinović from the Center for Climate Change.
New climate patterns are forcing other countries to expand their offerings, so that the tourism economy depends less on sky views.
Produced with the support of MEMO 98 and UNESCO within the project "Digital Tools and AI for Climate and Disaster Reporting", in collaboration with radio Kanal 77 (North Macedonia) - You can watch their story about waste disposal HERE
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