Living in England, I always thought freezing winters were a bit of a myth—a festive fairytale invented by authors like Charles Dickens. That was until I spoke with a few elders in my life, who detailed the white-frosted months they experienced as a child. Weather we don’t experience anymore due to a warming climate. One study even suggests that by the 2040s, most of southern England could no longer see sub-zero days at all.
To look at what losing our winters might mean for us, I’m inviting East Coast resident and snow lover to write about solastalgia on a warming planet.
That winter wonderland we all wanted in December? We just needed to wait a month.
After a record-warm December, inches of snow covered over half of the continental U.S. and ended a nearly two-year snow drought for much of the East Coast. In my hometown of Washington, D.C., school was canceled twice in one week and replaced by sledding, ice skating, and snowball fights.
Though these activities were a welcome reprieve from the miserably wet months of winter, they also remind me of everything we’ve lost from climate change.
That feeling of climate loss has a name: solastalgia, a sort of nostalgic longing for a world before climate change. And this month, I feel particularly solastalgic, as January’s winter wonderland has already been replaced by a record-warm front.
As the Planet warms, one overlooked casualty is the commonplace activities that define years past. So much climate coverage focuses on the large disruptions — record droughts, hurricanes, rising sea levels — that we forget how intimately climate affects our moods, feelings, and even memories.
Sledding and snowball fights were an integral part of my childhood growing up amid the lake-effect snow of Northeast Ohio. The same can be said for those who grew up skiing, another activity severely threatened by climate change.
Snow also creates a sense of togetherness: Snow days are days of communal activity, where entire neighborhoods come together to play hockey or ice skate. These activities — along with the fact that snow reflects light to create brighter days — can shake us out of the humdrum of winter and our collective seasonal depression.
With each year, however, those memories become less likely to be shared by current or future generations.
Spring snow cover is disappearing earlier in the Northern Hemisphere, and the U.S. snow cover season is, on average, shorter by nearly two weeks.
New research finds that many areas face a “snow-loss cliff,” where even a modest temperature increase significantly speeds up melting.
Together, these impacts create a world thrown dangerously off balance, one that differs not just from previous generations but also from our own childhoods.
So how do we cope with solastalgia, without reverting to climate doom or dread? First, we should accept that it’s normal to feel a sense of loss from this climate-changed world. The climate is changing and doing so fast enough to spell trouble:
In the West, snowpack has shrunk 15–30%, threatening a vital source of drinking water and irrigation.
In the South, mosquitoes and ticks, carrying vector-borne diseases, emerge earlier.
Across the country, earlier migrations of species are upsetting delicate food chains.
We must also accept that we alone cannot affect these mass, sometimes irreversible, changes. Instead, we must direct our energies to doing what we can.
That can mean volunteering at a community garden, or organizing a protest, or voting for a candidate who prioritizes climate.
It can mean simply reading newsletters like mine or Isabelle’s and sharing your thoughts with the people in your life.
In each case, you become part of a wider community.
Finally, we can’t dwell on what we’ve lost. In a climate-changed world, we so often lament the ravished landscape of our own making, largely thanks to decades of unchecked burning of fossil fuels. But too often, we ignore the beauty that still exists.
A climate-changed world is different, but it doesn't mean it’s terrible. We rush through the sloshy misery of January, February, and March so fast that we wish away a quarter of our lives.
But there is redemption in months like January and February, even without snow. For me, these months are perfect for locking myself away with thick, moody Russian novels — something I’d feel guilty about during the sunshine-happy hours of summer.
It’s hard to remember the beauty of winter as I slosh to work on cold, wet mornings with rain falling just above the freezing point. But when snow does fall, I can’t help but take a few photos of streets and trees blanketed in white.
These photos are literal snapshots of fleeting moments, memories of a world that still exists but is slowly disappearing before our eyes.
It reminds us of our loss, yes, but it also points to the beauty worth saving.
The lovely Brandon writes over on , a green newsletter for a greenwashed Planet. An ever insightful, snappy newsletter about what it means to be green anymore.
I love learning a new vocabulary word, even if this one is bittersweet. (And enjoy your snow... I'll take my Christmas South African style -- hot!)
I would enjoy the snow, if we ever got any, lol. Thanks for reading!