Washington Ski Area Shows Why a "Super El Niño" Forecast Doesn't Guarantee a Bad Season

A ski area not known for benefiting dramatically from the typical El Niño pattern is pushing back against the idea that its upcoming winter season may be a dud. 

In a post on its website and an accompanying social media video, Washington’s Summit at Snoqualmie broke down the data from a previous strong El Niño winter—the 2015-16 season—showing that despite the odds not necessarily being in its favor, 402 inches of snow stacked up that year.

Tap or click below to watch the video. Keep reading for more.

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Historically, the arrival of El Niño isn’t considered fantastic news for Pacific Northwest ski areas. The climate pattern, which is connected to warmer-than-usual ocean temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, can have wide-ranging seasonal effects on weather around the world.

For Washington, the expected impact is warmer and drier conditions.

Unsurprisingly, then, the Climate Prediction Center assigned warmer-than-usual temperatures as the likeliest outcome for Washington this mid-winter. The northeast corner of the state is slated for higher odds of drier-than-usual weather. See below.

As the Summit at Snoqualmie’s post shows, though, this isn’t the entire story. The broader El Niño cycle, the El Niño Southern Oscillation, is a useful tool for forecasters guessing at how a given winter pans out, but it is not a guarantee machine. Instead, it tilts the odds in one direction or the other. 

“There are plenty of exceptions, and many other factors that can have a major impact on what happens here at Snoqualmie Pass,” the Summit wrote. “Long-time locals know this place has a knack for getting snow even when you think it shouldn’t.”

The CPC takes that uncertainty into account with its outlooks—the darker the color of a shaded region on the map, the higher the odds forecasters think that outcome will come to be. Notably, these blobs of color don’t anticipate how much hotter, wetter, colder, or drier a region will be—just that it departs from average in a given direction.

Another forecaster, Luke Stone, who works with OpenSnow, also pumped the brakes on the El Niño hype train. One point he noted in a post was that this El Niño—surely you’ve heard it called a “Super” El Niño by now—is poised to become the strongest in recorded history. 

Because of that, “we have no true prior event to compare it to,” Stone wrote. “On top of that, the overall background state is much different than during previous super El Niños, and even during the previous strong El Niños.”

In an article about El Niño last month, the University of Washington College of the Environment echoed Stone’s point. Encouragingly, the last few “very strong” El Niños brought near-normal snowpack to Washington. Yet you should know the drill by now: don’t get ahead of your skis.

“The problem, though, is that because these ‘very strong’ El Niños haven’t happened very often, it’s hard to say whether they represent a real pattern or just a small sample size,” the article reads. “As a result, it’s hard to predict whether the Pacific Northwest will get off the hook and wind up with normal snowpack this year as well.”

What should you do with this information? Do what you were going to do anyway. 

Buy a ski pass (or don’t). Excitedly wax your skis. Dream of powder days. Yes, El Niño does stack the odds and fiddle with the atmosphere. Every winter is different, though, and with a potentially historic El Niño running the show, there are sure to be some surprises. 

Hopefully, they’re good for skiers in Washington and elsewhere.

Related: A Historic Ski Cabin Fell Into Disrepair. So They Picked It Up and Moved It.