We could tell by the time we turned onto the Crystal Mountain access road that we were in for a big one. “I’ve never seen this much snow this low,” I told Julie, as we watched a truck fishtail, skidding its tires in the line of traffic snaking up the hill.

“I’ve never seen…” seems like the common cry across the ski world this season: Tahoe has its biggest snowpack in two decades; Crested Butte got 100 inches in 10 days; ski hills like Monarch and Arapahoe Basin have had to close temporarily because they can’t keep up with snowfall. Snowfall combined with wind even shut down Jackson Hole for several days last week. This winter has been incredibly snowy, unless you live in Switzerland.

But, as we shovel out, again, and try to go skiing, it’s important to note that this year’s JanuBURIED and DEEPcember are not denials of climate change, they are reflections of it. “This is not normal,” we should keep telling ourselves, even outside of a Trump-induced emotional winter. It’s not normal. And it’s going to continue to be not normal in the face of unprecedented, human-induced global warming.