Seattle meteorologist Cliff Mass analyzes the report from the National Weather Service and comes up with some wonderful news:
La Nina and This Winter's Weather
I am always nervous about predicting the character of the upcoming winter's weather for a number of reasons. Seasonal forecasting skill is not good, with our long-range numerical models having very little skill past three weeks. Furthermore, our main seasonal forecasting tool with any skill, the relationship between El Nino/La Nina and local weather, only explains some of the interannual (between years) variation. In addition, the state of the tropical Pacific (which determines whether we are in El Nino, La Nina or La Nada) often changes during the spring/summer.
Earlier in the year it appeared that we would have a neutral (or La Nada) winter, but recently the waters of the tropical Pacific have cooled and the National Weather Service has released a La Nina Watch (see below).
And the upshot:
OK, what does all this imply for the Northwest winter? Generally cooler and wetter than normal. More snow than average in the mountains.
Music to my ears - although summer is the biggest season for the store with all the campers and hikers staying in the area for days at a time, the winter ski season is not too shabby. A lot of people just head up the mountain, hit the slopes and then hi-tail it back home afterwards but a lot of them hang out for a day or two in the area and there is a large influx of people who move here for the entire winter - the skiing is that good. Nice to have a good snowfall for them to enjoy - last year was wonderful and we had record sales to show for it.
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