Six Books About Winter as It Once Was

If winter feels a bit wrong to you these days, you’re right. For the past few months, across the United States, people have been dealing with record-breaking cold temperatures, unusually low snowfall, or dramatic precipitation—phenomena that have become more common recently, as the traditional rhythms of the season have been in flux. Even as some places deal with unexpected cold, winter is shrinking across the globe as a result of human-driven climate change, according to a study published last month in Nature. The planet is rapidly losing its snowpack, and the declines are the most significant in the southwestern and northeastern United States.

I grew up in New England and now live in the southwest corner of Colorado, both regions that are especially vulnerable to the warming atmosphere. I love snowy winters—I wrote a on the complicated joy of skiing—but I can feel them changing, as once-dependable yearly storms now