Japan's Olympic Games organizers have been planning to ship in mountain snow to help cool fans this summer.
Climate change may see that idea melt away.
Matthew Larotonda reports.
The Summer Olympics may have a slight snow problem
If you were planning to go skiing in Japan soon then you may be disappointed.
This season is on track to see the lowest amount of snow there on record, thanks to climate change.
That's an annoyance to tourists of course, but may prove more annoying for organizers of the summer Olympics, because they were planning to use some of that snow to keep fans and venues cool during the games.
Shooting snow, for example, onto fans in crowded bleachers at stadiums, like this test they did back in September.
It gets hot in Tokyo, often over 100 degrees Fahrenheit in summer.
Organizers were planning to send the snow from the mountains on its west coast to the event sites via train.
Japan's environmental agency believes that the depth of snowfalls along that shoreline may have shrunk as much as 15% per decade going back to the 1960s.
It may all be a moot point, of course.
There are fears the summer games may be canceled or postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.