What Super El Niño Means for This Winter ❄️
I can’t say I had it on my bingo card that anyone would use the term “Godzilla” scientifically. But, that seems to be catching on as a way to describe the impending El Niño. It’s not exactly scientific, but I did hear a scientist say Godzilla so … I’m taking it.
An El Niño event occurs about every three years, on average, when specific areas in the equatorial Pacific rise to a warmer than normal temperature. And, because the world is all really interconnected, that has a massive impact on worldwide weather patterns. In general, the Western U.S. sees more rain, there’s less rain in the Amazon, the monsoon season in Asia and sub-Saharan Africa is disrupted, and there’s a lull in hurricane activity from the Caribbean.
Globally, temperatures are driven wayyyy up, and locally, weather becomes more disorderly. Now, that could work as a transition into how this El Niño phenomenon may be a case study for what we’ll see in the next decade—as global warming continues skyrocketing and exacerbating climate change. But I’ll leave the climate catastrophizing for you to do on your own time.
The question is, how might it affect ski season? To start, there’s a 97% chance of the El Niño persisting through the winter and an 81% chance it reaches a super El Niño level. There are only three super El Niños in the modern reliable record (1982/83, 1997/98, 2015/16) and a strong but not super event in 2023/24. And this year could be lining up to be stronger than any of those (remember Godzilla?).
The textbook El Niño brings more precip to the Sierra and the Southwest, including Southern Utah and the Southern Rockies of Colorado. Meanwhile, the PNW, Northern Rockies and Northeast usually see a drier, warmer winter. Most of the interior West is a coin flip (although Utah and the far Southern U.S. all seem to have done better than normal when you only look at the strongest El Niño events). As with any weather, take it with a pinch (or two or three) of salt.
—Liam
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