With $4,000 worth of rock salt stocked neatly on the shelves of his Cranston hardware store and the mercury outside rising to almost 70 degrees, Ray Durfee couldn’t do anything but shake his head.
“We have definitely known it to be colder this time of year,” he said last Monday. “The snow shovels are in, but it hasn’t snowed. It’s the same problem every year. No one can predict the weather.”
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Despite the fact that last week’s record setting temperatures aren’t the norm for this time of year, local businesses usually dependent on the cold weather aren’t yet in panic mode. In fact, for many of them the unseasonably warm temperature is providing a brief and much needed respite.
“We are still working off orders we had, so it is a little bit of a reprieve,” said Dennis Hysko, co-owner of People’s Coal Company in Cumberland. “It’s definitely not typical, but I think all that we can do now is prepare for the rush.”
And there seems to be no doubt that the rush is just around the corner.
“It takes some ice on the ground before people are enthusiastic about stocking up for the winter,” Durfee said. “It happens every year; there is always a mad rush.”
Mike Baird, owner of Mike’s Professional Tree Service of Coventry, agreed.
“The only bad thing about the firewood business is that people are waiting for the last minute,” he said. “This warm weather is affecting the backyard guy who sells firewood on the side, but for me the first snow storm will bring the rush.”
“When it’s warm outside it gets very quiet in the shop,” said Bill Labell, owner of the Fireplace Shop in Warwick. “The minute that it gets cold there is an onslaught of people. That’s pretty typical.”
But waiting for the rush can sometimes be challenging, especially for businesses like Labell’s.
“It’s not really a financial loss, but it makes it more difficult,” he said. “Instead of the even flow, we get buried. That’s sometimes difficult to manage.”
Max and Patti Dewardener are accustomed to being at the mercy of Mother Nature. As the owners of the Yawgoo Valley Ski Area and Tubing Park in Exeter, the two have a long history of anxiously watching, and waiting for the temperature to drop.
“Here we go again,” said Patti. “At this point the warm weather isn’t hurting us, but we would like to open by Christmas week so the kids can come while on vacation from school. If the warm weather continues past December 20, then it could really hurt us.”
Last year the couple began making snow to cover their ski trails the day after Thanksgiving. Both say that’s not typical.
“We have had warm Decembers before and that has really hurt us,” Patti said. “In 1996 and 1997 we were feeling the effects of El Nino right through December and that was hard. It’s hard because you have to put employees on standby and basically just wait.”
Temperatures in the teens create the optimum conditions for snowmaking and all of the trails and runs can be covered in a week, Patti said.
That doesn’t mean the two aren’t monitoring the weather forecast carefully.
“Watching the temperatures get back to normal would definitely calm our fears,” she said.
Until then, Max said, they will continue to prepare for what is expected to be a very busy season.
“All of our numbers in pre-season sales are up,” he said. “What helps is that we are coming off a good season last year.”
Mike Ferreira, a salesman at Tri-Power Sales and Service in Warwick, agreed that last year’s snow accumulation fuels this year’s business, especially when you are a snowplow dealer.
“Our plow sales this year are most definitely based on how much it snowed last year,” he said. “People buy their equipment based on the previous year’s performance. They don’t care what the weather outside is today. Last year, it snowed a lot, so we have been installing and selling plows at a pretty good pace.”
All admit that it’s too early to judge what this year’s winter season will bring. And with temperatures expected to fall back to normal levels this week, Durfee said there’s no doubt that people with be trading their rake for a snow shovel soon.
“We have had one of the best leaf seasons in years,” he said. “But it can’t last forever.”
