El Niño To Bring More Snow To the Four Corners

Above, 2019 New Year's Day snow. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

It looks like this winter will be a colder and snowier one for the Four Corners region of the U.S.

I received an email from AccuWeather that indicates that snowfall will be much more this year than last year. It will bring excellent skiing conditions for ski resorts in the Four Corners. Purgatory's ski operators in Colorado are likely smiling bigtime!

I'll be making good use of the Jeep's four-wheel drive this winter, it appears.

Here's part of the email that pertains to the Southwestern U.S.:

Western US: El Niño to fuel atmospheric rivers

Last winter was one for the history books in California as an onslaught of atmospheric rivers dumped monumental snowfall in the mountains that helped ski resorts remain open until July and flooding rainfall that filled many water reservoirs across the region.

 

A repeat is possible this winter across California, Nevada and the Four Corners region, which includes Utah, Arizona, New Mexico and Colorado, due to the anticipated weather patterns shaped by El Niño. Most El Niños typically result in a stormy pattern over California with frequent rain and mountain snow, while storms largely miss the Pacific Northwest.

The upcoming season does look like it will follow the traditional El Niño pattern with the jet stream directing storms into California, Nevada and the Four Corners. This differs from the El Niño of 2015-2016 when storms largely avoided California. Pastelok added that cooler waters southeast of Hawaii could cause the storm track this winter to focus on areas south of Southern California occasionally.