Gavina Gul gazes out at the pool beside her home in Pakistan's Hunza Valley. In past years, it would transform into a makeshift ice hockey arena. This winter, it hasn't properly frozen over. Gul says the late arrival of cold weather is to blame.
If we see, there's a big difference between 2018 and now in 2026. Winter used to begin in November and everything would freeze. It's January now and the ice still hasn't frozen properly.
Scientists in the wider Hindu Kush Himalayan region report fewer extreme cold events and shorter snow seasons where snowfall fails to settle. Weather data for Hunza shows winter precipitation down by about 30% since the late 2010s with some recent winters also 2 to 3° warmer. [35.6°F. to 37.4°F warmer]
That's a problem for a region reliant on visitors with winter tourism there now at the mercy of cold weather that may never come. The community-run ice hockey tournament depends entirely on natural ice. For eight seasons now, Ghoul's Pool has hosted the contest. With that unusable, organizers scrambled to find a replacement rink, eventually locating one nearly 2 hours north in a town near the Chinese border.
Although the arena there was usable, the ice was difficult to skate on. Expectations. "I expected better ice conditions, but when I saw the rink, I felt a bit sad. Many of our players fell. The surface had too many bumps and wasn't strong. I'm not happy with the surface. Of three matches scheduled for the first day, only one went ahead. We were ready by this morning. The match was expected to take place. When we reached the rink, the ice wasn't in good condition. Team still played, but it was very difficult. The boys's match took place, not ours, the girls."
NEXT:
A three-part blog post re recent developments at Thwaite's Glacier coming shortly,
No comments:
Post a Comment