"When the Sky Forgot How to Snow"

In the winter of 2038, the snow didn’t come.

At first, people laughed. Tourists complained, skiers canceled bookings, and kids in Colorado threw snowless tantrums. But by February, the laughter faded into nervous silence. No snow meant no melt. No melt meant no rivers. No rivers meant no farms. And no farms—well, everyone knew what that meant.

People in the Western world had always believed in a form of permanence. Roads would always be black and straight, electricity would always flow from the walls, and winter would always wear a white coat. Seasons were rhythms, not questions. But now the rhythms were breaking like vinyl under a careless hand.

In the town of Lucerne Pines, high in the Rockies, old farmer Eli Patterson kept a journal. Not for publication. Not for legacy. But for truth. His family had lived there for five generations. And in his creaky hands, ink still felt holy.

January 5th. The creek outside never froze. I remember it roaring with ice back in ’97. Now it's a whisper, shy and shrinking.

The headlines on everyone’s phones said “Unusual Winter Patterns Continue,” as if nature were just a confused intern misfiling weather reports.

But it wasn’t confusion. It was consequence.

Western nations had known. The papers were published. The graphs were sharp and steep. The warnings came not in riddles but in conferences and documentaries. Yet year after year, economy outran ecology. The stock market never paused for the polar bears.

February 18th. No snowfall yet. Sarah says the apples may not bloom right this spring. She's trying to install shade cloths. Shade—when we should be shoveling.

Children like Eli’s granddaughter, Grace, had never built a real snowman. She’d seen videos, of course—laughing kids rolling spheres of white magic, carrot noses, coal eyes. But videos are not memories. They’re only reminders of what we’re losing.

Lucerne Pines wasn't the only place suffering. Across the globe, fires swept through California’s forests with the appetite of monsters. Rivers in France ran dry like inkless pens. The Amazon coughed more than it breathed.

And yet, in the halls of luxury, cooling systems purred while stocks in water-tech soared. Global warming had become a business model—disaster wrapped in dividends.

March 3rd. Rain fell instead. Cold, bitter rain. It soaked the earth but did not satisfy it. Trees look confused. So do I.

Some called it the “New Normal.” But that phrase tasted like betrayal. There was nothing normal about forgetting what snow smelled like.

One night, Grace asked Eli, “Did the snow used to make sounds?”

He nodded. “It whispered. The way trees do when they’re happy.”

She tried to imagine it but failed.

In their church, the stained-glass windows depicted Noah’s Ark. Irony soaked the air like incense. This time, the flood wouldn't come from rain—but from rising oceans, glaciers weeping into saltwater coffins.

Politicians talked of innovation. Geoengineering. Carbon credits. But in Lucerne Pines, no solution arrived on time. There were only memories and dry fields.

Eli’s final journal entry was shorter:

April 1st. Grace held her snow globe up to the sun today. Watched it fall inside. “Maybe the sky forgot,” she said. I think we forgot first.

Author’s Note:

This story isn’t set in a distant future. It’s an echo of now.

Global warming isn’t coming—it’s here. And while we drive hybrids and buy metal straws, the systems of power remain deeply addicted to consumption.

The Western world, with its privilege and reach, has a responsibility not just to adapt—but to awaken. Not in fear, but in humility.

The snow won’t come back because we miss it.

It will only return if we remember how to listen to the earth—and obey its silence.