Having lived in Upstate New York for 20 of my 21 years, there has always been one absolute come winter time: snow. I remember years when we had it as early as Halloween, and times that it has stuck around (or shown back up) as late as April. As long as I've been here, snow has been a part of winter life as I've known it.

And yet this winter, be it at the hands of global warming, a begrudged Snow Miser, or those mystic Mayans, we've barely seen any of the fluffy white stuff. Up until the second week of January, we had yet to have any appreciable snowfall. According to National Weather Service, in December 2011 Rochester saw one of its least snowy starts to a winter on record. We received only 4.9 inches of snowfall, 16.9 inches below average, and the sixth-lowest snowfall total on record. If you include the whole snow season total up to December 31 - a mere 5.2 inches - it ties for the third least-snowiest season on record. For the visual learners among us, we've received less snow than the length of the average human hand.

While we may revel in the dearth of driveway shoveling and windshield scraping, for many Rochester-area businesses that depend on snow, its seriously late arrival has been problematic. The American Rock Salt mines in Mt. Morris, for example, have faced layoffs: no snow storms mean no use for piles of salt. In Naples, the Cummings Nature Center's cross-country skiing and snowshoeing trails - which were set to open on December 28 - remained unused for nearly a month.

But this season's warm wave hasn't hurt all cold-related area businesses. The truth is that, even without the snow, some of the activities strongly associated with ice and cold have ways of coping just fine without it.

Bristol Mountain Winter Resort outside of Canandaigua opened December 12, and is only roughly a third of the way into its planned 125-day-long season. So for Bristol, it's still very early in the snowball game, and the warm weather hasn't dampened spirits. Turns out you don't need snow to ski or snowboard - at least not natural snow.

"This part of New York State doesn't get a lot of natural snow," says Drew Broderick, Bristol Mountain's director of marketing. "We don't rely on natural snow. It's nice but it's not what gets the trails open."

Instead, the resort puts its efforts into a constant stream of manmade snow. The process is a complex affair, with a team on-call 24 hours a day to keep track and monitor the snow-making conditions. Lower temperatures are best, and the type of snow being made can be changed to adjust to conditions as well -water can be added to make wetter, denser snow, which helps build the base, or lighter snow can be made for other areas. The resort deploys two types of snow guns: 174 tower-mounted and 36 sled-mounted air-water guns, along with 96 tower-mounted fan guns and 17 carriage fan guns to help spread the man-made snow. Single digits and low teen temperatures are best, but snow can be made when outside temps rise above that. Also bear in mind that while it may be warmer at ground level, temperatures are also colder at the top of the mountain, and manmade snow is more melt resistant at higher temperatures than natural snow.

"[It's like] squirting a water hose and you've got it turned cold blast. In cold temperatures you've got the full hose. When the temperate turns up it's almost like there's a kink in the hose, there's less productivity," Broderick says.

As of mid-January Bristol had 18 of its 34 trails open, three of its six lifts, one of its four parks/pipes, and one of its two Nordic trails. "Typically at this time we would have all 34 trials open, but we have 18 trails and a lot of terrain open," Broderick says. "We would like more colder temperatures, absolutely. But given how the weather has shorted out this winter, our team has done a phenomenal job."

Broderick noted a high attendance for this year's New Year's Eve events at the resort, which he says brought in around 1800 people, and says that the resort is currently ranked third in the state in terms of amount of resort terrain open, in a season where some resorts haven't even opened yet.

"Weather didn't stop us. Everything that we've planned for this year is still going on," Broderick says. "Despite the weather we are still going on, business as usual."

Closer to home, the Manhattan Square Ice Rink in downtown Rochester has seen a similarly encouraging turnout despite the nearly autumnal temperatures. This year's grand opening of the rink on November 25 drew 2000 people, and its New Year's Eve events nearly 1700, with 13,000 total visitors for the month of December, according to Jon Picone, athletics and aquatics coordinator for the City of Rochester. That's a higher total than last year's December visitors at the same point.

"People would rather ski when it's clear and cool," says Picone, who manages both the indoor Genesee Valley Park and outdoor Manhattan Square rinks. "For us it's been good on the outdoor rink."

The rink, which is shielded from most of the sun's direct light by the tall buildings around it, has managed to provide great skating conditions even with no natural ice on the ground. Even if the temperatures are warm during the day, for the most part they have dropped at night, giving the rink the best of both worlds: enjoyable skating weather during the day and perfect ice-making conditions at night.

"It's kind of like a thermostat basically," Picone says. "If the temperate gets really warm you have to adjust it."

While the prolonged warm spell hasn't really hurt the Manhattan ice rink's attendance, the unseasonal rain has. "When it poured, those days suffered," Picone says.

The rink will remain open until St. Patrick's Day in March, with its end-of-the-season celebration lining up with the city's annual parade. Given that Rochester finally saw some serious snow on Friday, January 13, it will be interesting to see how the season as a whole shakes out.