For Jackie May, this winter’s rain in the Salt Lake Valley has led to a lot of second-guessing when it comes to taking the ski bus to the mountains. She typically plans her work schedule around making time for snowboarding.
“Being down here, I'm like, ‘what am I doing? Should I go back to work?’” she said while waiting for the Utah Transit Authority ski bus at the mouth of Big Cottonwood Canyon.
“And then when I go up in the mountains, I'm like, OK, no, [winter] is still happening. This is how I want to spend my time.”
Although this winter has not had the same record-setting snowfall as last winter, not everyone is disappointed to see no snowbanks in the valley.
“I don't like to shovel,” said fellow bus rider Dianne Lanoy. “I do have a good car in the snow, but I don't like to drive in the snow. So, keep [the snow] up in the mountains.”
Even with more rain than snow at the lower elevations and a slow start to the winter, snowpack levels for this time of year are above average statewide. It’s also an El Niño year. That’s when warmer, wetter weather from the Pacific Ocean moves in and usually creates more precipitation.
But don’t go blaming El Niño for this winter’s wacky weather just yet.
“El Niño or La Niña really means nothing for snow and precipitation in northern Utah,” said University of Utah atmospheric sciences Ph.D. student Michael Wasserstein.
“Prior literature has shown that El Niño can produce lots of precipitation in Utah, or it can produce little precipitation in Utah … I don't think we can draw any conclusions about this winter's weather based on El Niño patterns.”
Wasserstein is the lead author of a new study that dives into why the Wasatch Mountains get so much snow. As it turns out, it’s all about a diversity of storm types and weather patterns.
“You can get this storm we're having this week, a more southwesterly flow type storm,” he said. “That's sort of a warmer trajectory. Or the Wasatch sees these northwesterly storm tracks, which are much colder and can produce lake effect storms.”
According to Wasserstein, a strong jet stream is causing most of this winter’s regular precipitation.
Although El Niño can affect how the jet stream moves across the country, he said it’s still too early to point to warming water in the Pacific Ocean as the reason for Utah’s warmer winter. In fact, past El Niño years have been inconsistent in how much snow comes to Utah.
And snowpack in Utah is important.
According to the Utah Division of Natural Resources, around 95% of the state’s water comes from melting snow. Even with two above average winters pulling virtually the entire state out of drought, there’s still no guarantee that this weather pattern is the new normal.
For Wasserstein, it’s “truly tough to say whether we'll go back towards a drought pattern or will continue to have snowy winters like this one and last year.”
