Talk of balmy January weather gives Jennifer Shultz the shivers. No snow means little or no business for SnoZone, her family-owned winter recreation park in Finleyville, now up for sale.

	Lake Fong, Post-Gazette Jim and Jennifer Shultz, owners of the SnoZone in Finleyville, try to save all of their snow from melting before the weather turns colder. Click photo for larger image.

"This is the worst year, honestly," said Shultz, who with her husband Jim, opened SnoZone on a 950-foot hill along Route 88 seven years ago for snow boarders and people willing to pay for fast downhill rides on an inner tube.

Mother Nature is an equal opportunity spoiler. The past few weeks of mild and rainy weather have dampened business for small operations such as Sno-Zone and Allegheny County's Boyce Park, as well as larger and better-known ski and snowboard destinations such as Seven Springs Mountain Resort in Somerset County.

Pennsylvania -- the fifth largest ski destination state in terms of visitors, behind Vermont, New York, Colorado and California -- typically attracts 3.5 million ski visitors a year. The visitors patronize gas stations and restaurants as well as resorts, and support seasonal workers, from ski patrols to chair-lift operators. So far, however, miserable weather has kept may skiers away.

It could pick up on Friday, when a cold snap is expected to arrive. Resorts around Western Pennsylvania are rooting for the chillier temperatures so they can make snow and take advantage of the three-day holiday around Martin Luther King Day -- a critical money-maker for the winter sports industry.

But today the forecast is for more rain and a high temperature of 61 degrees, continuing the unseasonably warm trend.

Only 11 of 31 slopes were open yesterday at Seven Springs Mountain Resort. Blue Knob All Seasons Resort in Claysburg was closed to skiing, as was wealthy businessman Joe Hardy's Mystic Mountain ski area at the Nemacolin Woodlands Resort & Spa in Fayette County. Also closed due to rainy mild weather was The Springs at Laurel Mountain, a state park site managed by Seven Springs.

Nearby Hidden Valley has scaled back operations due to the unusual weather but still has snow on the ground from before Christmas. Its mountaintop location makes it chillier than Pittsburgh and the other urban areas where its customers live.

"Let's be real. We don't have mid-season conditions but we have skiing and snow," said Hidden Valley spokesman Keith James. "The perception is, of course, that there's no snow in my back yard so there can't be snow anywhere else in the world. That is a constant challenge for the ski industry."

SnoZone is husbanding what snow it does have, hoping that the National Weather Service prediction for colder weather going into this weekend will help salvage their season.

"We're going through all kinds of exotic measures to protect the snow for the next couple of days," said Shultz, who expects to be open and making new artificial snow on Friday if the cold snap develops. "Maybe we'll have a late season into March. That would be nice."

"It's going to get better on Thursday," said an optimistic Joe Stevens, spokesman for the Snow Shoe Mountain Ski Resort in West Virginia, where the high altitude has kept some snow on the ground and allowed slopes to be open on a limited basis.

Snow Shoe and other resorts plan to make snow aggressively once the temperatures fall below freezing. Snow Shoe, for example, expects to place its snow-making guns right in the middle of the trails where they can have the most effect. So bring your goggles if you plan to ski.

"We can recover real quick," Stevens said. "When we're full out making snow we can make 2,800 tons of snow an hour. That's like taking five football fields and putting a foot of snow on them in an hour."

While it is has been wet and warm in Western Pennsylvania since Christmas, ski resorts in the Pocono Mountains and other eastern areas have fared somewhat better with enough cold weather and snow to stay open.

"It's been a strange and whimsical year. That's the best way to describe the weather pattern," said Gregg Confer, president of the Pennsylvania Ski Areas Association and the operator of the Elk Mountain resort in Pennsylvania's northeast tier.

The Jack Frost & Big Boulder Poconos Resorts, however, were closed last weekend when an ice storm coated tree branches and felled utility lines, cutting power and creating a hazardous situation for skiers, said spokesman Carl Kerstetter.

"We've had it all," Kerstetter said. "There has been no normal."

The economic impact is significant when mild weather spoils winter fun in Western Pennsylvania's mountainous Laurel Highlands area, said Julie Donovan, spokeswoman for that region's visitor's bureau.

"Winter is a critical season," she said, noting that the warm weather has idled people who depend on ski slopes and other tourist destinations for seasonal income. "We love winter. We're very happy that the winter is going to be turning, very happy."

When there's no snow, it affects more than the resorts. Donovan said gasoline stations and other retailers are hurt as well as seasonal workers who run the ski lifts and groom the trails at resorts.

"We're snow farmers basically," said Greg Kline of Willi's Ski Shop, an equipment seller with four locations, including one at Seven Springs. "We're just like the ski resorts or a golf course in the summer when it rains. There's no demand."

Most ski areas were able to operate during the lucrative week between Christmas and New Year's day, when school was out and some families took vacations.

Unlike SnoZone, the bigger resorts have other things to do when the snow stays away. Seven Springs is showing complimentary movies, holding roller skating parties, bowling and other events. Nemacolin reopened a mini golf course and has other outdoor events, including a Hummer course and a shooting academy.

Nonetheless, Nemacolin's Mystic Mountain and other resorts "fully expect to have a ski season," said Nemacolin spokesman Jeff Nobers. "From our standpoint, we want it to get cold. We want to get the ski operations up and running."

It won't be too soon for Colleen Ley, a longtime member and officer of the Pittsburgh Ski Club and president of the Western Pennsylvania Ski Council.

"I don't remember having this much rain, so much rain in the winter months," Ley said. "But there's nothing you can do. If Mother Nature doesn't deliver, you can sit at home, you can cry, you can jump up and down. There is nothing you can honestly do."