Remember 2005?

Amar has looked at ENSO affects through 2004.  It's a really cool summary and would be nice to update to current.

He's got a discussion and his thoughts up there, but here's my short list (feel free to interpret them differently):

1) Strong La Nina winters kick ass in the PNW (on average)
2) Strong El Nino winters are much worse on average than most winters, but there's still more snow than CO
3) Weak or neutral winters will generally provide good skiing, with pretty good seasonal snowfall averages


Digging a bit deeper (but not much).  As a Alpental dood, I pulled out all the years that snoqualmie received less than 300 inches (that's a crappy year).  
**There were 6 years in 55 years of record where this occurred.
**3 were Strong El Ninos
**1 was Weak El Nino
**1 was Neutral
**1 was Weak La Nina

So based on that, there's a chance a really crappy year could happen any year (except strong la nina), but a much greater probablity during a strong El Nino.  The worst Strong La Nina isnt great, it's 410 in, which is 1 nice powder day below average (438 in).


FWIW, I bought a pass and talked my friends into it to.  It's gonna dump, you don't wanna miss it !!!

We are skiers! This time of year we always know it will be the biggest winter ever. Remember that La Nina is based on solid science and El Nino is a bunch of crap, those weather experts have no idea what they are talking about. It will dump. Buy your pass, get new gear, get the stoke up. Do a powder chant. I love fall.

We are skiers! This time of year we always know it will be the biggest winter ever. Remember that La Nina is based on solid science and El Nino is a bunch of crap, those weather experts have no idea what they are talking about. It will dump. Buy your pass, get new gear, get the stoke up. Do a powder chant. I love fall.

This post is why TAY needs a thumbs up emoticon. I guess will have to do.

This from today's NWS forecast discussion:

THE NEXT SYSTEM ON SUNDAY CONTINUES TO HAVE POTENTIAL TO BE 
HYDROLOGICALLY INTERESTING. MODELS HAVE NOT SETTLED ON A SOLUTION 
WITH THE RAINFALL BULLSEYE LOCATION RANGING FROM SOUTHERN BRITISH 
COLUMBIA TO WASHINGTON. EVEN THE SOLUTIONS THAT BEGIN THE HEAVIER 
PRECIPITATION OVER VANCOUVER ISLAND EVENTUALLY SAG THE BAND OF 
HEAVIER PRECIPITATION OVER WESTERN WASHINGTON ON SUNDAY WITH THE 
POTENTIAL OF 3-4 INCHES ON THE NORTH COAST AND OLYMPICS AND 2-3 
INCHES IN THE NORTH CASCADES.

It also looks like the freezing level will fall to 3000' or so in the period Tuesday through Thursday albeit with only light precip after Tuesday's event according to new weather models. Update: No reason to get all excited about the low freezing levels as that was apparently an outlier solution and freezing levels have now gone back to earlier solutions with 6000 to 8000' freezing levels. 

2005 was cool. You could ski silver basin without it being tracked out by the paying public.

www.turns-all-year.com/skiing_snowboardi...dex.php?topic=2326.0

cliffmass.blogspot.com/

Based on solid science