The super El Niño year
Last winter was bad. If you skied anywhere near the Cascades, you already know, and I'm not going to reopen the wound. I want to talk about this winter instead, because the scientists say this one might be historic, and I have been reading every word they published.
The short version: there's a super El Niño in the Pacific right now, and it's still growing.
El Niño is a big patch of warmer-than-normal water along the equator that rearranges where storms go for an entire winter. This one arrived last summer and has been strengthening ever since. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center issued an El Niño Advisory in October. Their September forecast put the odds of a very strong event above 90 percent, and gave a 75 percent chance that this El Niño comes in stronger than every one since 1950. By the October update, that number was 83 percent. The record it's chasing is 2.4 degrees above normal, set in 1982-83. They are talking about breaking a record that has stood for more than 40 years, and the number keeps going up.
What that means for snow is the textbook El Niño pattern: the storm track shifts south. NOAA's winter outlook calls for a wetter-than-average winter across the southern U.S., and a warmer one across the north.
OpenSnow, which is the snow forecast site I trust and the one I'd tell you to sign up for, has been on this story since August. Their winter forecast says the same thing. Super El Niño winters load the dice for California, the Southwest, Utah, and southern Colorado. Tahoe, the Wasatch, the San Juans, New Mexico. That's where the odds are best.
The Pacific Northwest, though, is where OpenSnow says to temper expectations. Their forecast favors below-normal snowfall for Washington, because El Niño winters run warm there, and warm storms rain instead of snow. I told you I'd get to the bad news.
Here is where I make my irrational decision.
I believe in climate science. I believe it the way you believe in gravity. And I am choosing to ignore the forecast for my own mountains this year, because the alternative is to sit here in October and accept that the winter is already lost, and I refuse. Call it denial with a season pass. I'm calling it hope.
The part I enjoy is that hope isn't even crazy this year. In all three giant El Niño winters on record, Mt. Baker got 657, 648, and 622 inches, within five percent of average every single time. The last super El Niño winter, 1997-98, the Pacific Northwest snowpack finished at 102 percent of normal. Even OpenSnow's Washington forecast carries a snowy January signal at the coldest part of the year. A warm winter still has cold weeks, and cold weeks are where the powder hides.
Super El Niño is going to be a win. It has to be. Last year was that bad.
If you're going to gamble on hope, check the odds every morning. Sign up for an OpenSnow account. Their Daily Snow forecasts are written by meteorologists who actually ski, the 15-day forecasts are the best way to plan a trip around a storm, and the app is free: https://opensnow.com/
And the good news is that even if the sky never cooperates, you can still ski this winter. Download Max Vert, which I believe is the world's only skiing card game you can download on iOS. The mountain never has a bad snow year, because the mountain doesn't have weather. Eight rounds, a hand full of runs, and one decision that never changes: bank the vert, or send it.
Max Vert on the App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/max-vert/id6792035970
See you out there. I'll be the one at the lift line checking OpenSnow, still believing.