Do recent early snows bode well for this El Nino season?

[baggzy]

Anyone know if early snow in Colorado (and elsewhere) bodes well for this season, despite El Nino?

 

[Admin]

IMO despite their fun-factor appeal, they don't mean jack.

 

[Mike Bernstein]

Agree with Admin. The recent storm is a very typical early-season pattern for Colorado. It's only a week or two early.

 

[baggzy]

That would be my assumption too. If I had the data I'd gladly try to figure it out, but alas... I don't think it exists.

 

[Tony Crocker]

IMO despite their fun-factor appeal, they don't mean jack.

100% correct, especially in Colorado. The snow is so low in water content that Sept/Oct natural snow rarely lasts long enough to make any contribution to the winter snowpack. Wolf Creek is the conspicuous exception: Volume of storms is much bigger, and the source is late Mexican monsoons, higher in water content. These storms are normally cold enough to produce snow at Wolf Creek starting around October 15. They don't happen every year (less than half certainly), but when they do they will often put down a 4-foot base that's very usable on Wolf Creek's mostly intermediate terrain.

despite El Nino?

An incorrect assumption. Steamboat is the only Colorado area favored by La Nina (spectacularly so the past 2 seasons).

If I had the data I'd gladly try to figure it out, but alas... I don't think it exists.

If it exists, it would be very spotty. But that wouldn't matter. If November and January snowfall (etc. for other 2 month apart examples) don't correlate, there's no reason to think September and November would either.

 

[skibum4ever]

I've been wondering whether the amount of rainfall received this past summer is any indicator. Is it normal for a wet summer pattern to continue into the winter? :dead horse:

As I sit here nursing my broken thumb, I would love to see some indicator that it's going to be a fabulous season!

 

[Admin]

My own anecdotal observations, and they're nothing more than that, seem to indicate that weather trends often follow ~6-week cycles. I've observed little to no correlation beyond that.

 

[Tony Crocker]

I've been wondering whether the amount of rainfall received this past summer is any indicator.

Again, no.

 

[baggzy]

despite El Nino?

An incorrect assumption. Steamboat is the only Colorado area favored by La Nina (spectacularly so the past 2 seasons).

And favoured by La Nina = disfavoured by El Nino, right? So I was wondering if early snow might mean that this season's El Nino wasn't going to have a detrimental effect after all. But from what you say below it seems there's no evidence of that. Oh well. Worth a try!

If I had the data I'd gladly try to figure it out, but alas... I don't think it exists.

If it exists, it would be very spotty. But that wouldn't matter. If November and January snowfall (etc. for other 2 month apart examples) don't correlate, there's no reason to think September and November would either.

Also, I read somewhere that El Nino causes higher snowfall in November and March for Colorado, but lower snowfall in Dec-Feb. Any truth to that?

 

[Tony Crocker]

Also, I read somewhere that El Nino causes higher snowfall in November and March for Colorado, but lower snowfall in Dec-Feb. Any truth to that?

The impact of El Nino on snowfall is not absolute and clear-cut in any case. It's a bias that is likely to show up sometime over the 6-month period that I analyze snow. There is no statistical evidence assigning that impact to a particular month. If you read any of my season summaries (example http://bestsnow.net/seas08.htm for the recent strong La Nina) you'll see that the expected bias in snowfall occurs intermittently, typically during somewhat less than half the season.

weather trends often follow ~6-week cycles. I've observed little to no correlation beyond that.

I've looked at this from time to time. Here are the month to month correlations in snowfall for the areas where I have a lot of data:
Area Nov/Dec Dec/Jan Jan/Feb Feb/Mar Mar/Apr
Killington 14% -7% 1% 29% -2%
Mansfield Stake 18% -16% -12% 41% -4%
Mt. Washington 44% 42% 6% 49% 22%
Alpine Meadows 10% 16% -4% -34% 35%
Donner Pass 7% 11% -1% -33% 33%
Kirkwood 30% 25% 16% -12% 33%
Mammoth 25% 9% 22% -13% 35%
Southern California 15% 9% 17% 13% 21%
Crater Lake 4% 31% 13% 5% 26%
Mt. Bachelor 20% 17% 28% -7% 26%
Mt. Rainier 18% 38% 34% -2% 0%
Whistler Alpine 20% -8% 13% -3% 7%
Alta 7% 2% 18% -36% 2%
Snowbird 16% 5% 16% -23% 8%
Brighton 25% -2% 41% -14% 1%
Jackson Hole 10% 22% 22% -20% 19%
Grand Targhee 16% 33% 35% 22% 44%
Glacier NP, Canada 14% -22% 27% -5% -20%
Lake Louise -6% -28% 24% 10% 9%
Sunshine -20% -5% 42% -6% -33%
Berthoud Pass 6% 6% 20% 11% 13%
Loveland 24% 22% 19% 21% 28%
Winter Park 14% 7% 5% -4% 0%
Gothic 5% 17% 25% 16% -6%
Taos 6% -2% 34% -8% 14%

Average 14% 9% 18% 0% 12%

The correlations are positive, particularly in early season, but if you look at the individual areas you'll see there's so much noise in the data that its credibility must be next to nothing. The correlations 2 months apart are all less than 10%. Day-to-day correlation of snowfall most of us expect to be positive. It's 27% at Steamboat and 38% at Mammoth, both based on 20+ years. These are still not huge numbers, but they do conform to the expectation that weather is more streaky at Mammoth and more consistent at Steamboat.

 

[Bluebird Day]

I saw a woollybear catapillar wearing an avalanche beacon the other day.... what does that mean? :-k

 

[chris062]

I saw a woollybear catapillar wearing an avalanche beacon the other day.... what does that mean? :-k

I put twenty years of data about woollybears and their avalanche equipment into my statistical software and the correlation with epic snowfall is .99 :wink: