I’m a lousy skier, spending more time on my rear than on my feet. So it’s a good thing I didn’t tackle the slopes in Colorado last week, where officials blame a surge in hospital visits on scarce snow. Between collisions on a limited number of overcrowded runs, and flips over ditches “that would typically be full of snow,” skiers are packing emergency rooms with dislocated shoulders, broken hips and concussions.

Ouch.

So what about ice skating? That has got to be safer, right? Not so, say sheriff departments across Minnesota. The state has had an extremely warm winter, meaning thin lake ice – and the accidents to show for it. Skaters, fishing houses and ATV riders have plunged through thin ice from Lake of the Woods in northern Minnesota to Lake Ulm in the south.

Winter conditions fluctuate from year to year, of course. Who in the Mid-Atlantic can forget Snowmaggedon 2010? But this year’s mild winter across much of the country is consistent with a long-term warming trend driven by carbon pollution.

For example, the mountains in north central Colorado have warmed about 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the last half-century, and many monitoring stations across the state are seeing an increase in winter rain, rather than snow. Minnesota is warming twice as fast as other states in the Midwest. And although snowfall rates have increased, lake ice is thinner and doesn’t stick around for as long as it used to.

Given the perils of reduced snow and ice, maybe jogging will be the safest winter sport for me. At home in northern Virginia, I was able to ring in an unusually warm start to 2012 by competing in a 10K race … in shorts.

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