Warming Up For Winters: How Shimla Lost Its Snowfall

Do you love silence—where the beauty of nature is wrapped in its quiet magic? Then, come along; let us walk back up the memory lane to Shimla- a hill station watching its glorious past melt down the slopes and even the pages of history.

There was a time when winter used to arrive in Shimla with silence in its tranquil environment, amidst stillness and purity in the air. Several timeless memories of Shimla’s winter are frozen in the minds of the people who lived in that era when snowfall was an accepted part of their lives rather than an event, drawing a tourist crowd and noise to the town.

Landmarks like Jakhu Peak graciously overlook Shimla, with its dense, tall cedars laden with snow. The red-roofed cottages, where the British and Anglo-Indian families lived their summers, are remnants of history. It is now; the concrete Shimla is gradually emerging from the woods, gaining height and density, and changing the shape of the ancient hills-- discovered by the Britishers, later declared as the summer capital of India in 1864 by John Lawrence, then the Viceroy.

Shimla has changed a lot in rhythm and appearance. Here, the winter doesn’t arrive with the same severity to colour the town white. The silence of whiteness is lost. The town doesn’t wake up to frozen water taps, trees laden with white sparkles, icicles hanging from edges like diamonds, or the soft, roomy night snow spread across the town.

Mall Road, the business artery now, then a lifeline of Shimla, rooted to its colonial legacy, finds itself in much unfamiliar times. Winters are shorter and warmer, and snowfall is uncertain, scanty, and not even occasional. Buildings, showrooms, hotels, restaurants, and fast-food joints have filled all slopes and the tree lines, where snow used to be the showcase of winter charm.

Years have passed since Shimla witnessed its last white Christmas or children skillfully crafting snowmen. The mounds of accumulated, playful whitish snow that once gathered along the Mall, the Ridge, Scandal Point, or the busy Lakkar Bazar have become an extreme rarity post-1990s.

“Snow is now an attraction, a selling point instead of being a heritage. Those were the days when we, the children, used to venture into exciting snow adventures. Going up to Jakhu with wood-crafted sledges, available at Lakkar Bazar (market of woodcraft works), and sliding down on the snow up to Kaithu—the downhill locality through Ridge and Scandal Point—was a whole day theatre of fun-loving groups,” recalls Raaja Bhasin, Shimla historian and author.

Things have changed quite rapidly for the hill town. The last biggest snowfall recorded in Shimla was on December 31, 1990, which was 104 cm. The town got completely paralysed by the snowfall and remained cut off from the rest of the world for almost seven to eight days. 

Emergency services, entire road communications, electricity, drinking water supply, telecom services, newspapers, and milk and bread supplies were cut off, and hospitals were the worst hit.

The total snowfall record of the year 1990-91 was also the highest, i.e., 239 cm. It is still among the biggest snowfall winters in recent history and is often cited as a benchmark for “heavy snowfall” winters.

The tourists staying in hotels could not check out on January 1, after their New Year's celebrations, and they remained stranded and had to abandon their vehicles and walk through the snow on foot to reach the nearest points to travel back home.

Heavy snowfall in Shimla has become less frequent in recent decades due to climatic variability and warming trends, except in 2012 and 2020, when Shimla received around 95 cm of snow in January 2012, making it one of the heaviest snowfall seasons in the post-1991 period. During 2020, Shimla recorded about 89.4 cm of snowfall.

 Since then, the winters have passed without significant snowfall events.

“Shimla is practically a two-season town now—the monsoon is witnessing extreme rainfall causing disasters, house collapse, and landslides, and thereafter snowless winters. We can safely say the absence of snow is more than a visual loss; it is a warning. Rising temperatures, erratic weather patterns, vehicular pollution, and unchecked human pressure have contributed to Shimla’s woes on climate vulnerabilities,” climate change scientist Dr Suresh Attri says, also adding, "Notably, Shimla's spring season has also shrunk, taking away all its charm."  

The hill station is crowded far beyond its carrying capacity. The tourists arrive with the hope of experiencing nature, winter snow but go back disappointed. What Shimla gets in its share is noise, polluting vehicles, and mounds of garbage. The hill station, long romanticised as a quiet winter retreat, now bears the scars of unregulated footfall.

Walking cautiously on icy roads was a kind of perfection in daily life. Inside houses, families relied on wood-fired angithis, fireplaces, and bukharis for keeping the home warm. The electric, LPG-based, and kerosene heaters came much later.

“I remember winters in Shimla turning the town into a paradise under a blue sky. Walking through icy paths, sliding on the snow and playing with snow, and sledging were crazy acts in those days after the winter closing of the schools. People used to find it tough to open their doors in the morning due to the three to four feet of snow on the Mall,” recalls Balbir Thakur, a retired IPS. 

Drawing from his past experiences, Thakur says, “The snow is now left in the stories that the family elders narrate to their grandchildren—once upon a time, it used to snow in Shimla. It is now in electric refrigerators!!!” 

For a journalist who spent years reporting on Shimla, the once-regular calls from Chandigarh-based newspaper photographers—who were irresistibly eager to be tipped off about the season’s first snowfall to capture its visuals for a page 1 story—have now faded into distant memories.