8/30/26 Sunday 10:30 am
was going to start by sharing some recent headlines about the “Super El Niño.” Then I thought there was no need; everyone has heard it, and we have been hearing it for months.
Last month I came across the following article. This article was published by NOAA’s PMEL (Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory). Here was the title of the arcticle:
“Climate models get a key feature of El Niño wrong, undermining forecast accuracy”
I am not going to break down the entire article, it has to do with how the models react with cloud cover related to the El Nino conditions, and how that affects model accuracy.
Because NOAA was the source, I decided to look into the weekly El Nino tables published by them.
I looked something called PDF and Spread Correction. PDF stands for Probability Density Function. Not going to go into a full science class here, but what NOAA’s CPC does is they go back to all of their preferred model’s past ENSO forecasts, then they compare that to the verifications (what actually happened) and they go into this quantile mapping correction to correct the model biases.
Let’s go over how those values are classified:
Weak + 0.5 to +0.9
Moderate +1.0 to +1.4
Strong +1.5 to +1.9
Very Strong => +2.0
Here is the source of all of the “Super El Nino” forecasts we have been hit over the head with the last 6 months.
There are a couple things to point out here. This is the uncorrected forecast showing that monster +3.5 value that everyone latched on to. But notice when that forecast peaks–November! Before most of our forecast area even gets snow! When you actually look at the “heart of winter, that forecast drops to +1.7. Keep in mind this is the raw forecast before bias correction.
Here is NOAA’s bias corrected version of the same thing
Talk about a completely different forecast! These values are much lower than the previous record set in 1983 as well as the very strong El Ninos of 1997-98 and 2015-16.
I researched Strong El Nino’s that peaked in November, and became moderate El Ninos in the heart of winter. During the winter of 1972-73, we were in a Strong El Nino it peaked in November at+2.2. During the heart of winter the average was +1.4. That is an exact match. The other match that I have not mentioned is that we are going to be in strongly negative phase of the PDO this winter, I am not going to do a deep dive in the Pacific Decadal Oscillation right now, but in 72-73 winter we were in a strongly negative phase of the PDO as well.
You can probably see where I am going with the 1972-1973 winter analog. What happened that winter?
Purgatory: 296″ No where near a record. But a very good year. BTW the biggest snow year at Purgatory was in 1978-1979 with 500.5″. The second highest year was 1974-1975 with 458″.
Telluride: This is interesting because the station is likely near the airport, not on the mountain. The location description is “Telluride 4 mi NW”. 1972-1973 was the 9 heaviest snowfall year on record at that station with 259″.
Durango: You didn’t think it was going to be that easy did you? I am pretty sure the hippies were in charge of record keeping that year. Maybe they were all skiing… They only took 6 readings in December and nothing the rest of the winter!
However, Vallecito did record their totals at the dam. 219.80″, their 3rd highest total ever recorded.
Can we conclude it will be a great winter? We’ll see! I am sure ready for it!