Monday, August 28, 2023

Expectations for the Coming Ski Season

You may have seen some guesses about what will happen this coming ski season.  Such predictions are often issued with great fanfare and overconfidence.  I'll pick on AccuWeather here because they are an easy target.  The outlook they issued in late September 2022 included the following.

"Unfortunately, we have bad news as far as the drought goes in parts of California, Nevada and the Southwest," Pastelok said. "The main storm track will be even farther north than it was the first half of the winter season last year including the late fall."

Then there was the accompanying snow outlook. 

What a spectacular crash and burn!

The reality is that these seasonal forecasts, based largely on the loading of the dice due to the anticipated presence of El Nino or La Nina, have somewhat limited practical utility for most applications.  If you didn't have any knowledge of meteorology, you might expect there to be a 33% chance of below average, 33% chance of near average, and 33% of above average precipitation in any given season.  At best, we can shift these odds just a bit.  For temperature, we can shift them a bit more simply because of the growing influence of global warming.  

So let's look at expectations for this season.  El Nino conditions are currently in place across the equatorial Pacific Ocean with the most anomalously warm sea surface temperatures (SSTs) off the South American coast, but anomalously warm sea surface temperatures extending across the entire equatorial Pacific.  

Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center

El Nino is expected to persist through this winter (the Climate Prediction Center gives a > 95% chance it will survive through at least February).  This affects thunderstorm characteristics in the tropics, which in turn can affect the midlatitude jet stream.  Correlations between El Nino characteristics and temperatures and precipitation over the western US weigh heavily into seasonal forecasts, with recent long-term warming trends also considered. 

For Nov-Dec-Jan this leads to the dice being loaded for above average temperatures across the western Continental US.  In this case for Utah, there is a 40–50% chance of above average, or what the Climate Prediction Center calls "leaning above" (see scale at lower left).  

Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center

For precipitation during Nov-Dec-Jan, they are loading the dice slighly for below average in the Pacific Northwest, but indicate equal chances across the rest of the western continental US.  Basically, they don't have any confidence in it going one way or the other.  


Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center

Below are the projections for Feb-Mar-Apr.  


Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center


Source: NOAA Climate Prediction Center

I'm a little surprised that they aren't leaning above for precipitation in portions of SoCal with El Nino being expected.  This may be due to the fact that this was issued in mid August and perhaps we'll see that appear if confidence in the El Nino grows over the next month or two.  

Bottom line here is that I see no reason to change the seasonal snowfall forecast that I have issued for the past several seasons in the Wasatch Range.

I have no idea what is going to happen. 

I guess I might add on caveat and that is that I would lean toward above average temperatures for the cool season and a vulnerable low-elevation snowpack.  As we saw last year, a favorable jet stream can still give us an enormous low-elevation snow season, and we will need probably need an active storm track with some colder storms to overcome recent warming trends and what are currently remarkably high global temperatures.  

7 comments:

  1. I predict that it will snow less than last season and that people who go skiing and snowboarding regularly will enjoy themselves. It is now almost labor day, and I feel exactly the same as I did 1 year ago despite how different the seasons were.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Jim,

    Here is the August 2022 forecast of precip and temp for Jan, Feb, Mar 2023.
    Every major long range forecast model busted for CA, NV, UT and much of the west coast. In my opinion, these models showed absolutely no skill.

    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/archive/2022080800/current/V_usprate_Seas5.html

    https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/NMME/archive/2022080800/current/V_ustmp2m_Seas5.html

    Rich A.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. We'll get better at this eventually, but right now, we're just not very good. Past relationships from a relatively small number of seasons are alluring, but really have limited useful skill.

      Delete
    2. Get better means with regards to seasonal modeling like the NMME. Until that improves, or some sort of machine learning approaches advance, we're going to struggle.

      Delete
  3. I'm very surprised as well not to see a little better chance of above normal precipitation in southern California extending westward to include Arizona and New Mexico. For Utah my winter forecast is 120-130% of normal for Brian Head, 110-120% for Eagle Point, 100-110% for the southern Wasatch, 90-100% for the central Wasatch, and 80-90% for the northern Wasatch and points north including Beaver Mtn.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Any chance we could get more info about the early season snow in the Alps? I heard even the town of Zermatt had snow, this would seem pretty unusual for August!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The real story there was the flooding in Austria. Unfortunately I haven't had time for a close look.

      Delete