It’s all downhill from here, and we’re not talking about the approach of Christmas, or the end of 2013 and impending New Year.

The days are going to start getting longer from here on out, now that we’ve passed the winter solstice. That milestone happened Saturday.

As of today, the sun is staying above the horizon just a little bit longer. According to the U.S. Naval Observatory, the sun is expected to set at 4:16 today, a minute later than yesterday; and by this time next week, sunset will occur almost 5 minutes later.

You might not know it from today’s expected temperatures, but spring is still a long way off. It is, however, nice to be on the downhill side of the season.

Which is not the same as being off the hook when it comes to winter. Not only do we have a pretty good idea of what January and February have in store for us in the snow and cold departments, but we depend on them, in fact.

As much as we like to gripe about shoveling, scraping, driving, sloppy footing, slush, cold and the length of winter in New England, the prospect of snowless winters in our region is not pleasant to contemplate, though it could become a more frequent reality if some of the climate-change models pan out.

But there’s no denying that a lot of industries depend on that white gold falling from the sky, from ski areas to hotel operators and people who manage the blade of a snowplow.

That was one of the lessons of the winter of 1979-80, which NOAA ranks last in recorded seasonal snowfall since we started keeping records in the 1860s. The state took a pounding that winter, and the one after it wasn’t much to crow about, either.

Occupancy rates at hotels and lodges plummeted and ski area operators – back in the days before snowmaking apparatus was standard equipment – lost an estimated $15 million, the equivalent of more than $40 million in today’s money. So desperate were the state’s ski areas that they applied to the Farmer’s Home Administration for a bailout.

“Ski areas are like farmers and snow is their crop,” said David Currier, secretary of the state’s ski area operator’s association. “When we have no snow, skiers don’t germinate and we have no business.”

Most ski areas in the state were closed and New Hampshire lost the equivalent of $225,000 per week (today’s money) in rooms and meals tax revenue, and the state seemed on the verge of financial default. It didn’t help that fire had destroyed the grandstand at Rockingham Park in the summer of 1980, shuttering a $5 million a year revenue source. The state implemented a hiring and travel freeze and several departments had to cut their budgets so the state could pay its bills. Investment services downgraded the state’s bond rating.

We have a little more of a cushion since that time – ski areas no longer depend exclusively on Mother Nature – but the recent expansion at Pats Peak in Henniker reminded us that our winter economy still relies heavily on the white stuff. That’s especially true in the northernmost regions of the state, where snowmobiling has exploded as an economic staple in the past few decades, but it’s still true in southern New Hampshire, too.

So enjoy the extra daylight and complain all you want about the inconvenience of snowstorms – and how bad all those other people are at driving in them.

But don’t gripe too loudly. It could be worse.

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