Utah’s last winter was one to forget. Record-low snowpack dinged the state’s ski industry, fueled drought and zapped water supplies.
But as next winter approaches, hope springs eternal.
“We will not have another winter like last winter. It was a big anomaly,” said Tom Pettigrew, general manager at Brian Head Resort in southwest Utah.
This year, Brian Head is shooting for Utah’s earliest opening date — Nov. 6. The resort plans to begin its season a couple of weeks sooner than last year and is already selling lift tickets. Alta, Solitude and Park City in northern Utah also plan to get people on the slopes before Thanksgiving.
Despite historically dry, warm conditions last year, Brian Head still offered skiing for around 160 days, Pettigrew said. This year, he expects to exceed 180 days. Part of that confidence is the forecast for a weather pattern churning thousands of miles away: El Niño.
In ski circles across the West, hype about how much white stuff the impending “super El Niño” may deliver has reached a fever pitch. In Utah’s case, however, the buzz may be getting ahead of itself, said Assistant State Climatologist Jon Meyer.
“The first thing that we're emphasizing is for people to pump the brakes,” Meyer said, “and realize that historically whatever is happening in the El Niño-La Niña cycle has very little push on how our winters end up.”
El Niño and La Niña are the warm and cool phases of a cycle known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, a pattern of rising and falling temperatures in the tropical Pacific Ocean that can influence global weather.
It’s not that there’s uncertainty about the strength of the forthcoming El Niño. Forecast models are nearly certain that conditions will reach strong El Niño status by the time it peaks this winter. Meyer said there’s around a 70% chance it could become the warmest El Niño on record.
The problem for Utah is that the pattern hasn’t historically had a strong connection with the state’s weather. The Beehive State sits in the no man’s land between El Niño’s typical impacts: a wetter southern U.S. and drier northern U.S.
Looking back at other strong El Niños in recent decades doesn’t clear things up, either. Just as many of those examples produced below-average winters for Utah as they did above-average, Meyer said, which leaves this year’s outlook as a coin flip.
“Even if we have an extreme year like this, we still have to realize that there are just as many cards in the deck for us to have a bad winter as there probably are for us to have a good winter.”
While resorts can’t control the weather, Brian Head is doing what it can to prepare for whatever this season may bring. This summer, Pettigrew said the resort spent nearly $1 million to beef up its snowmaking system.
“It increases the amount of water that we deliver, which enables us to use approximately 50% more snow guns,” Pettigrew said.
The amount of snow they can make depends on the temperature, though. The hope is to take advantage of having the state’s highest base elevation nearly 10,000 feet up, Pettigrew said, which can provide temperatures cold enough to manufacture white stuff earlier. The resort needs the wet bulb temperature — a metric that looks at both air temp and humidity — to be below 28 degrees to make snow.
Pettigrew pointed to other positive signs, too.
Brian Head saw pretty consistent monsoon rains this year, he said, which put more moisture in the soil than going into last winter. That matters because dry ground can soak up snow’s moisture, while saturated ground is more likely to preserve what’s on top. The abundant snow season already happening at South American ski resorts is also a good omen, he said.
“We're seeing differences in the weather this year compared to last year and the prior year,” Pettigrew said. “And that just gives me hope — more than hope, gives me confidence — that we will see a return to a winter like we normally experience at Brian Head.”
El Niño exhaling a bunch of heat from the Pacific Ocean into the atmosphere could still throw a wrench in Utah’s snow plans. Warmer temps could push winter precipitation to fall as rain — something that fueled last winter’s snow drought.
“There is a very fine threshold between rain and snow. Just a degree or two of temperature change means a very different type of water being delivered to Utah in a very different hydrological scenario,” Meyer said. “So yeah, it's a critical question.”
This extra warm El Niño is also occurring on top of climate change, which scientists agree is driven by fossil fuel emissions. So, it’s headed toward uncharted territory.
“We don't have a great analog historically to look back on,” Meyer said. “That is really complicating things for our outlook this winter.”
El Niño also isn’t the only atmospheric phenomenon at play. Another climate pattern called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation is currently in a phase that has not historically paired with good Utah winters, Meyer said.
Right now, the early winter forecast suggests above-average precipitation chances will remain south of Utah to start, Meyer said. The extended outlook for February and March looks more promising.
And after last winter’s awful snowpack, the stakes are high.
“This upcoming winter is a critical year for our water resources,” Meyer said. “This year really drew down a tremendous amount of our water savings account, and so, if this next winter does not deliver somewhere close to normal, that changes the calculus.”
