Koerth: Even in Duluth, winter isn’t what it used to be

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There is no bad weather, only bad clothing. Minnesota’s unofficial state motto holds deep wisdom and abiding truths that have carried its citizens through generations. But as Mike Creger lounged on the deck in his Duluth backyard on a 40-degree day in late January, it occurred to him that, while the phrase still holds meaning, the particulars may be a touch … different.

Time was, a body could trust that many layers of good, thick clothing would make it possible to enjoy biting cold and heavy snow. Anyone who was miserable in winter simply wasn’t trying hard enough. But now, the wool is too heavy and this new bad weather is just too damn pleasant. Duluth, a city once known for hard winters that build strong character, is shifting toward a warmer, rainier climate. The environment is making space for a floppier sort of personality — so much so that the city has been labeled a “climate refuge” for out-of-staters seeking homes less likely to fry in the heat or flood with rising sea levels.

The kind of climate change Duluth is experiencing may be less physically risky than, say, Florida or Texas, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t psychological impacts. “It’s been a year since I could go cross-country [skiing], and it’s a little depressing,” Creger said. The cold and ice weren’t just weather here. They were familiar neighbors. Getting outside and enjoying them was part of the local sense of self. A warmer, wetter Duluth may look great to Californians. But to paraphrase a different bit of timeless wisdom: What shall it profit a man if he gains the whole world, but loseth his snow?

Duluth isn’t the only Minnesota city suffering through a string of disappointing winters, of course. When the nonprofit Climate Central published its most recent list of cities whose winters have warmed the most since 1970, both Minneapolis and Duluth made the top 20 — and Mankato wasn’t far behind. But Duluth started out from a different place, at least reputationally. When Creger moved up from southern Minnesota 15 years ago, people thought he was crazy. Even within the state there’s an understanding that Duluth weather is built different.

Likewise, while all Minnesotans hold a certain amount of pride in our ability to play outdoors even in the depths of winter, Duluthians were maybe just a little more smug. It’s one thing to walk from your house out onto a frozen Bde Maka Ska. It’s another thing entirely to meander across a parking lot and out onto the frozen waters of the largest freshwater lake in the world. This is ice that feels less like a solid surface and more like a living beast.

So it’s no surprise Duluthians have taken our recent spate of nice-yet-existentially-horrifying winters a little hard. Back in the 1970s, average winter temperatures in Duluth were often in the single digits. In 2023, the average winter temp was 15.86. In 2024, it was 24.75. “Last year for all intents and purposes we had no snow,” said Jay Austin, another longtime Duluth resident, who lives near the Chester Bowl ski trails that have spent more time as walking paths in recent years. “There’s a psychic toll to looking out the window in the middle of January and seeing my awful lawn,” he said.

And the feeling gets worse when Austin looks out at Lake Superior in February and there’s not enough ice for skating rinks and fishing holes. Lake ice is actually what brought him to Duluth. He’s a scientist at the Large Lakes Observatory who studies how lake ice has changed over time. Ice cover and thickness has always varied from year to year, he told me, at least as far back as we have reliable records. But everything changed around 1998.

Over the last 25 years, it’s become more normal for more of Superior to stay open. Low ice years predominate. Recently, as Austin drove home from a trip north along the shoreline, he saw lake ice only beginning to form — in February. “I could see a guy on the harbor fishing in a hole and just a little further off a guy surfing,” he said. People will still interact with the lake, he told me, but the how of it will change.

And the how matters, to lives, livelihoods and the way the people of Duluth think about themselves and their home. “If there’s no snow there’s nothing to do,” Creger said. Even as others look to Duluth as a place to flee in an effort to escape climate change, he and his friends have left (temporarily) to go searching for their lost winter elsewhere. Creger has ended up driving to the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan more than than he used to. He also just finds himself working more.

We usually talk about the mental health impacts of climate change in big, scary terms. Studies look at rates of PTSD in the wake of floods and fires and extreme heat events. Popular-science articles discuss anxiety and stress caused by the knowledge the climate is changing and we’re not doing enough to stop it. But there’s a quieter sort of damage, too. There’s a sense of loss and even grief that comes with your familiar landscape shifting slowly underneath you, becoming less recognizable, little by little.

Scientists call it solastalgia, a feeling made all the more horrific by the fact that the changes that cause it creep northward like an early spring. Some of us already have solastalgia for lower latitudes. Creger remembers childhood winters in southern Minnesota, building forts in huge snow piles and skiing all winter — and the point where he stopped bringing his skis to visit his parents at Christmas, because there just wasn’t enough snow anymore.

There’s not yet a lot of research out there on solastalgia. Even less on what to do about it. But it’s real and, if nothing else, it can be a point of connection between the people who’ve lived in Duluth long enough to feel it change, and the new people arriving there in hopes that change will feel less severe. They’ve got something in common.

And, in the meantime, Duluthians will adapt their lives and culture to what exists. Like how Creger still walks with his daughter three blocks to Lincoln Park so she can take ski lessons. She loves to connect with winter, and they go there a lot. It’s just that, lately, the snow is more likely to come from a machine.

Maggie Koerth is an award-winning science writer who has covered the intersection of science and society for publications such as FiveThirtyEight.com, the New York Times Magazine and Undark magazine. She is the editorial lead for CarbonPlan, a research nonprofit focused on increasing transparency and accountability for climate solutions, and appears regularly on NPR’s “Science Friday.” She lives in Minneapolis.