For Mark Hittinger, owner of Outkast Sports & Apparel in Vernon Township, the winter has been tough.

If you can call it a winter at all.

Revenue is down 10% since last year, largely thanks to rain and milder weather, the kind not conducive to skiing and snowboarding on nearby Mountain Creek Resort.

“I think everybody’s kind of just optimistic and just assuming it’s a bad winter, and hoping for a better winter next year,” he said.

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With an average temperature of 41 degrees, last month tied with 1932 to be the warmest January in New Jersey since record-keeping began in 1895, according to state Climatologist David Robinson. New Jersey recorded an average of just a half-inch of snow in January, tied with 1913 for the second-lowest ever, ahead of only January 1934, he said.

“We are in a warming climate,” said Robinson, who’s based at Rutgers University in New Brunswick. “The odds of it being warmer and less snowy increase over those of being cold and more snow.”

Large ski resorts like Mountain Creek, based in Vernon Township, and Campgaw Mountain Ski Area in Mahwah say they’ve been forced to adapt.

“This is something that we have to plan for and prepare for because of our geographic location,” said Evan Kovach, the general manager for Mountain Creek. “It’s kind of business as usual for us,”

“With the milder weather comes less snowfall, and as you go up the Eastern Seaboard to resorts in Vermont, they’re relying on natural snow for a lot of their terrain, whereas we have 100% snow-making,” Kovach continued. “So every trail that we can try and open, we can make snow. When you get into northern New York, Vermont, New England, that’s not so much the case.”

But snow-making comes with its own pros and cons, said Ron Fuhr, director of customer service at Campgaw.

“There is a cost. They’re expensive to purchase and expensive to run, because they do run on electricity,” he said. “But in all honesty you can make a whole lot more snow than Mother Nature can.”

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At East Coast ski resorts, that process may cost from $500,000 to over $3.5 million across a season and consume up to 400 million gallons of water, according to one ESPN report. Campgaw and Mountain Creek did not share the exact figures.

Both resorts also declined to share visitation figures, but Kovach said Mountain Creek has done well despite the less-than-wintry conditions.

Coming out of the pandemic, “the last couple years were two of our best we’ve seen,” Kovach said, “and this year is consistent with last year.”

“People don’t like to ski and ride when it’s miserably cold,” he said.

Hittinger, the Outkast Sports owner, said for outfitters, it's like being stuck on a treadmill: "Once it rains, it’s a slow period for a couple of days," he said. "Then, once they’re able to start blowing snow again, it starts getting busier again — then it rains."

Fuhr said the lack of snow has been challenging for Campgaw given the demographic that the mountain draws on.

“We’re a beginner-lower-intermediate mountain local to New York City, so the demographics that we draw are people that have never been skiing before, or try it,” he said. “They don’t think about it if there’s no snow in their backyard.

“We just got to get the word out to everybody that just because you don’t have it in your backyard, we do have it here,” Fuhr said.

One potential winner this season has been the Big Snow indoor ski slope at the American Dream megamall in East Rutherford.

Hugh Reynolds, the slope's chief marketing officer, said there have been more guests this year, though he stopped short of drawing a direct connection.

“I can’t say that’s what’s driving it. We are seeing increased visitation this year,” he said. “What I can say: When we see rain outdoors, we see more people come indoors to ski, and there has been more rain this winter.”

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“When the outdoor weather isn’t conducive to doing things outside, we certainly get more aggressive with our messaging and our social media," he added.

There's not much relief in sight for those who love cold weather. The National Weather Service is predicting higher-than-normal temperatures for the Northeast for the rest of winter into April. Forecasts for North Jersey call for highs in the mid-40s to mid-50s over the next week.

Daniel Munoz covers business, consumer affairs, labor and the economy for NorthJersey.com and The Record.

Email: munozd@northjersey.com; Twitter: @danielmunoz100

This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: NJ ski slopes Mountain Creek, Campgaw cope with mild winter, climate