This winter's unusually warm weather, though a blessing for many, is threatening one of the College's oldest traditions -- the Winter Carnival snow sculpture.
Due to a blast of warm air from the West Coast, some students are starting to fear that the snow sculpture may never be completed.
"The weather is ruining all my plans for building the sculpture," said Patricia Bankowski '95, head of the Winter Carnival council.
"Besides the warm weather melting the snow, making it impossible to build a solid base, the rain is further hindering my plan," she said. "If the ground wasn't so wet I could have put up the rest of the frame."
The Winter Carnival committee plans to build this year's sculpture using a frame as a base and then covering it with snow.
The technique was abandoned a decade ago in favor of carving the sculpture out of a tiered block of snow.
Tim Chow '96, another council member, said "Basically we are in a holding pattern regarding the sculpture, as it is obviously impossible to work with the weather this warm."
"We would love to ship in snow, but unless the temperature consistently remains below freezing that would be pointless," he said.
Even if work on the sculpture begins next week, the time left to finish it is uncommonly short.
"It's almost going to be like the Bonfire. When I was a freshman we had a week to build it, now they only have a day or two," Bankowski said.
"The same is going to hold true for the sculpture. We normally spend six weeks, this year we will have only three," she said.
In order to complete the sculpture by Feb. 9, the carnival committee will need a lot of help from the student body, she said.
"Basically we will have to make a huge effort when the temperature lowers and we are going to need a lot of support to get it done on time, " Chow said.
But even though work on the sculpture has come to a complete halt, Bankowski said, "Traditions don't die at Dartmouth ... We will have a sculpture."
This winter's warm temperatures is a result of the El Nino storms in the Pacific Ocean, which are warming the eastern pacific waters, said Chief Meteorologist Rick Gordon of ABC affiliate WMUR-TV in Manchester.
Although Gordon said it will be colder in the next few weeks, "the El Ninos will continue to cause wild fluctuations in the temperature as well as drastic and sudden changes concerning snow and rain thus creating havoc for ski areas."
The warm weather is hampering ski areas in Vermont and New Hampshire, where there is virtually no natural snow.
"We went from being fully open last week ... to closing everything except our major trails and skiing on man-made snow, " said Bob Gillen, spokesman from Stowe Mountain.
The Dartmouth Skiway is also still open, but is operating only on man-made snow, said Don Cutter Jr., manager of the Skiway.
The Skiway and other ski areas like Killington, Stowe and Okemo are hoping to start making snow either tonight or tomorrow night.
