As snowboarders, we cling to a basic belief that, above all else, snow will fall. We may read about, hear, or personally experience dire news regarding climate change—a drought in this state or a warmer-than-average winter in that one—but at the end of the day, the faith we have in snow to continue to fall borders on the religious. And like the faithfully religious, we look for omens, signs of things to come.

Perhaps no omen in the winter sports community generates more buzz than the El Niño, a warming pattern out in the Pacific Ocean. This means that the water during this pattern is warmer than it normally would be. In fact, predictions for this year show it may be a Super El Niño, meaning that the water is warmer even than it would be during a standard El Niño, two degrees Celsius to be specific. So, what does this mean for snow?

“When it comes to an El Niño year, you generally are going to see wetter than normal conditions across the Southwest over towards Texas and the Gulf States, and a drier than normal pattern over the Gulf area, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and on up to the Northeast coast,” Kevin Eubank, Chief Meteorologist for KSL in Salt Lake, told me over the phone.

Wetter conditions don’t always mean colder. In fact, the warmer water temperatures are often part of a larger, global warming pattern, oftentimes meaning warmer on-the-ground temps. This means that rain or denser snow could be falling more frequently at lower elevations.

The northeast is the exception here. Instead of seeing warmer and wetter conditions, places like New England have the potential to see colder but drier conditions—great for snowmaking, maybe not for snow itself.

This is all, of course, speculation. Tracking weather, though it is a science, is hard to do with precision this many months out. What will the winter look like in places like Utah, Vermont, Oregon, or Minnesota? The short answer is—we don’t know.

Eubank, also an avid snowboard collector, stressed this point.

“ When it comes to the predictability…El Niño is kind of a 50/50 indicator,” Eubank said.
“And so some years in an El Niño, you can do awesome, but other years in an El Niño, it's normal to below normal. And that's different for every location.”

While there are no crystal balls or long-range forecasts to tell us which mountains or cities will get blanketed in snow on which dates, we do have history. We know how much snow fell in previous years, and we have data to know how often the bounce-back after a bad snow year has taken place. And more specifically, we know when that bounce-back has occurred during an El Niño year.

 

“ Just for history's sake, because I'm a Utah guy and I'm a meteorologist here in Utah—we're coming off of historic heat, historic drought. In fact, some of the hottest years ever, some of the driest years ever. When you look at that pattern coupled with an El Niño, 90% of the time the next season flips, meaning we get a normal to above normal,” Eubank said. “... when you go back in history and look at the big snow years that we've had here in Utah, they often will coincide with an El Niño. Not always, but often they'll coincide with an El Niño.”

This perhaps sums it up best: look at the data and be cautiously optimistic. We cannot cling to some blind notion that snow will fall simply because of what kind of year it is. It’s a factor, but there are others. And right now it’s just too early to tell. As snowboarders, we’ve been burned by the weather before, and we’ve been pleasantly surprised by it. We’ve looked at forecasts and felt both elation and depression. It comes with the territory. To base your life on something that depends on the weather comes with its own set of challenges and joys. So right now all we can do is wait and see what happens.