The Abridged version:
- Since the 1980s, Tahoe residents have been trying to predict what winter will bring by looking at forecasts dubbed “El Niño” and “La Niña.”
- This year, the forecasters are predicting a La Niña will appear in the fall and then weaken toward December.
- History shows that snow lovers might be less likely to be disappointed if they ignored the long-term forecast and just let the snow fall where it may.
As summer eases into fall in Lake Tahoe, all eyes turn to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
It is there, thousands of miles from the Sierra, that Tahoe residents and visitors who love to ski, snowboard, snowshoe or sled look for guidance on what the coming winter will bring.
This tradition, which began in the 1980s, has become something of an obsession for those who yearn for that first winter storm – and hope it will be followed by many more.
But the deep faith that so many snow lovers invest in a famous forecast based on ocean temperatures may be misplaced.
Will it be an El Niño year, they wonder, when a warming patch of ocean water can bring large, frequent storms to California? Or will it be La Niña, when people fear that cooler ocean waters will mean fewer and smaller storms here?
“Every fall there’s always people talking about what El Niño means or what La Niña means,” said Maddy Condon, who has become accustomed to the chatter as she heads into her sixth winter working in the Tahoe ski industry, where she’s currently a spokeswoman for Palisades Tahoe.
The forecast isn’t just of interest to skiers. Tahoe businesses and their employees also follow it because of the winter’s effect on the economy. A big snow year usually means bigger crowds – and revenue – for the ski resorts. A bad year means the opposite and can lead to early layoffs for seasonal employees.
Forecast focus began centuries ago
Tahoe’s preoccupation with El Niño and La Niña began before Condon was born. Record-breaking rainfall in the western U.S. during the winter of 1982 triggered widespread flooding that led a national magazine to run a cover story blaming the weather on unusual ocean temperatures. A change in the currents in the South Pacific had swept across the ocean, eventually lifting warm water to the surface off South America. That then prompted a shift in the jet stream, guiding strong winter storms straight into California.
The article exposed Americans to El Niño for the first time, but there was nothing new about the phenomenon. Peruvian fishermen are credited with naming it “El Niño” – Spanish for little boy – in the 1600s because it often appeared around Christmastime. El Niño’s less noticed alter ego, meanwhile, often leads to more storms in the Pacific Northwest but a drier season in the Sierra and Central and Southern California. Scientists dubbed it “La Niña” because it is, more or less, the opposite of El Niño.
La Niña, El Niño, or … La Nada?
The increased interest among the public has prompted scientific studies, regular updates from the federal Climate Prediction Center, and even an El Niño blog from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
This year, the forecasters say a La Niña will appear in the fall and then weaken toward December. By the time winter arrives, this year’s forecast could turn out to be neutral, neither El Niño nor La Niña, something one meteorologist dubbed “La Nada.”
In reality, history shows that snow lovers might be less likely to be disappointed if they ignored the long-term forecast and just let the snow fall where it may.
Between 1950 and 2020, Tahoe had 27 El Niño winters, according to Jan Null, a former National Weather Service meteorologist who now does private forecasting and analysis from his Bay Area base. Fifteen of those 27 El Niños produced above normal precipitation, as expected, but 12 were below normal. Of the 24 La Niña years during that period, 15 led to below normal precipitation. But nine of those 24 years had greater than normal rain and snow, not the skimpy production that had been expected.
No slam dunks for either forecast
While the average precipitation is indeed higher than normal in El Niño years and below normal in La Niña seasons, neither forecast’s effect on any particular winter is a slam dunk. A recent example: The winter of 2023, despite being a La Niña year, still went on to produce more than a dozen major storms and the sixth snowiest year on record for the Tahoe region.
That’s why Condon, the Palisades Tahoe employee, said she doesn’t put too much weight on the El Niño or La Niña predictions.
“I’m not a meteorologist,” she said. “But one thing I’m most sure of is that at some point during the year there’s going to be a storm that mega dumps a ton of snow.”
Condon’s skepticism is well placed. Null, the Bay Area meteorologist, agrees that the long-range climate forecast based on ocean temperatures is often upended because other, difficult-to-predict factors can shape the day-to-day weather in the Tahoe Basin.
“If somebody really had the answer to what the temperatures would be this winter for energy costs, how much water there is going to be in the Colorado River for power production, where the big storms are going to be that are going to impact commerce,” Null said, “that person would have a line a mile long outside their office door, people with briefcases full of cash.
“You do not have that. You don’t have that superrich meteorologist out there. I wish it was me, but it’s not.”
Daniel Weintraub is a regular contributor, writing Tahoe Loco for Abridged.