What new NOAA outlook actually means for Western Washington’s chances of winter snow

What does a forecast of El Niño mean for Western Washington? And does it mean we have a smaller chance or no chance of a lowland snow event? The answer: Not really!

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The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) recently put out its updated winter weather outlook, and the projections all agree on potentially warmer than average conditions, with above or below average precipitation chances roughly in the equal range. 

Typically, in an El Niño year like this one, Western Washington would have warmer and drier conditions. We tend to get a split flow in the jetstream where the storm track is diverted north and south of our area, producing calmer conditions for us. Right away, that usually leads people to assume that we won’t have any lowland snow, or that it will be a bad ski season. 

While there might be a small correlation between say, fewer snow events and El Niño, I’m here to tell you we’ve had plenty of snow, wind, and rain events in El Niño, La Niña, and neutral years. I’ve personally forecasted all three for the past 20 years and I’ve seen it all.

I’ll give you an example. Let’s say hypothetically, the month of January is 1.5 degrees warmer than normal. Again, this is just an example. Does that mean that every day in January will be warm? No! We could still easily have a few day stretch with below average temps that could produce a lowland snow event. The 1.5 degrees just speaks to overall average temps being slightly warmer.

So, in this hypothetical case, maybe we had three or four days five to 10 degrees above average, which weighed heavily in the monthly average, with just a few days much cooler than normal.

This is a very long-winded way of saying, no, the most recent winter weather outlook doesn’t mean we won’t have a lowland snow event. It truly just means statistically speaking, our temps have a higher chance to be warmer than average.

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