WESTHAMPTON — The maple sap runs have become closer to a jog in recent years.
During the late winter and early spring months in western Massachusetts, the sap in maple trees freezes and thaws just enough to move through the tree and “run” out the spigot.
When the days hover around 45 degrees Fahrenheit and the nights drop to 25 degrees Fahrenheit, Steve Holt — owner of Steve’s Sugar Shack in Westhampton — says he used to be able to collect 1-2 gallons of sap per tree.
“Just enough to warm them up, and just enough to freeze them again at night,” Holt said.
But 53 years after his first syrup season, Holt finds his buckets filled with about a half-gallon of sap each day. To make up the difference, he taps more trees in less time.
“We would be making syrup until the second week of April most years, which gave us close to eight weeks of sugaring. Now we only have six weeks,” Holt said.
The likely culprit of these changes is temperature.
A study out of Salem State University found that minimum, nighttime temperatures in New England are rising faster than maximum, daytime temperatures. In fact, the region as a whole is warming faster than any other area of the United States, excluding Alaska. In the last five years, the upward trend seems to be accelerating.
“I didn’t expect that, over the last five years, that we would see an acceleration of heating going on in New England,” said Stephen Young, author on the paper and a climate researcher at Salem State University. “I thought that it might just continue the way it was [going].”
Those cold, snowy New England winters are becoming rarer, and industries like sugaring, skiing, forestry and farming that have long relied on the chilly season are feeling the heat.
Above the global average
In the study, Young and his son Colin analyzed three different temperature sets to look for trends in New England’s climate. They found the average annual temperature in New England has increased 2.5 degrees Celsius, or 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit, from 1900 to 2024, far higher than the global average increase of 1.3 degrees Celsius. Winter temperatures particularly rose twice as fast: Massachusetts winters average 5 degrees Celsius warmer today than a century ago.
“Humans have a short memory, and we can’t remember many Decembers ago. So when we get a chilly December, we think it’s not warming up anymore,” Young said. “But in fact, if you take that relative to 50 years ago, it’s probably warmer than it used to be.”
As temperatures continue to rise, the amount of yearly snow cover continues to fall. Satellite data shows New England lost 30% to 40% of yearly snow cover days from 2000 to 2025, particularly in the shoulder seasons of spring and fall.
“The most striking is the acceleration of temperatures and snow cover decline in the past five-year period,” said Michael Rawlins, associate director of the UMass Climate System Research Center. “That’s certainly consistent with the sharp rise in atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations driven by human activities.”
At the same time, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found the annual increase of atmospheric CO2 is also accelerating, with the increase between 2024 and 2025 breaking all previous records.
But the above-average warming in New England is driven by changes in the oceans, Young said. Fresh water melting off glaciers in Greenland weakens the Gulf Stream, a conveyor belt that brings warm, salty water from the West Indies to western Europe. As it slows, the diluted current moves northward into the Gulf of Maine, concentrating that warm water along the New England coast and blowing hotter winds onto the land.
“We’re going to probably get more winter precipitation, and it’s going to be coming more often as rain than snow,” Young said. “However, summer’s being warmer, there’s more evaporation power, and so we’re going to start to see more drought in the summertime.”
Into the woods
Those wetter winters pose a challenge to foresters who prefer frozen ground to mark and cut large trees. Tom Jenkins, who owns Blue Dog Forestry in Westhampton, said the prime time to remove trees is during the cold season when the large equipment cannot damage the soil.
“Modern logging machinery seems to be getting bigger and bigger and bigger,” he said. “Twenty or 30 years ago, we had log skidders that were the size of a pickup truck, and now we have machines that are more like the size of a school bus. Those machines cause more damage to the ground when it’s either saturated or not frozen.”
Forests rely on cold temperatures to kill off invasive species, and losing that defense has disastrous effects on native ecosystems. Jenkins said native eastern hemlock trees have survived outbreaks of invasive Hemlock Woolly Adelgid for decades, but after several years of mild winters, the invasive insect has devastated forests up into Vermont and New Hampshire.
“Many of these [invasive] plants come from areas where they have a longer summer period, and so that gives them an advantage compared to our native trees,” Jenkins said. “They stay green longer, and they leaf out sooner, and it gives them a little more opportunity to build the reserves they need to take over the forest.”
No more spring snows
Farming, too, relies on winter temperatures to wipe out pests and diseases hiding in the soil, said Harrison Barstow of Barstow Farm in Hatfield. The freezing and thawing of the ground breaks up dirt like a till, and snow adds moisture to the beds before irrigation begins.
“People don’t account the added costs and time that goes into irrigating a crop,” he said, “Relying on natural rainfall, you cannot do that anymore.”
This seasonal shift in both temperature and precipitation has moved the growing season for farmers, Barstow said. Crops now grow much later into the fall, up until early November, but the spring remains a bit cooler than in previous years. Frost, rather than snow, threatens spring crops.
Barstow said he irrigates the soil a month earlier in the spring and a month later into the fall to make up for the changing seasons.
“It’s almost like a shift,” he said.
Waiting for the moment
Even as winter temperatures warm, the coldest months of the year in southern New England can still drop below freezing long enough to get some snow.
Berkshire East Marketing Coordinator Nathan Marr said the Charlemont resort remains open throughout the winter, but carefully plans days to make snow and reserves it in huge piles called “whales” to best navigate unpredictable temperatures.
“Even over the past couple winters, we’ve been able to make snow when the opportunity presents itself,” Marr said.
Weather conditions limit snowmaking to specific days. Temperatures must be at or below freezing and dry, powder-like snow needs low humidity, or the snow becomes wet and heavy, Marr said.
Like with farming, opportunities for winter sports vary in the shoulder seasons. Typically, the ski season lasts from Thanksgiving to the first week of April. Around mid-March, the resort begins its transition into warmer-weather mountain sports in case it becomes too warm to make more snow.
“We are doing the best we can to operate a ski resort in a challenging environment,” Marr said.
This winter, however, has brought over a foot of snow to the state and sub-zero temperatures. It’s the most snow Massachusetts has seen since 2015, far different from the warm winters of the last decade.
“Well, I mean, that’s climate change,” Jenkins said. “There’s less average days and more days on the fringes.”
