Early last week, the Climate Prediction Center issued its monthly El Niño/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) diagnostic discussion, confirming earlier forecasts for "ENSO-neutral" conditions to continue through spring 2014. ENSO-neutral means that neither El Niño nor La Niña conditions will predominate.
For the Wasatch Range, this means little. We discussed last month how little correlation there is between snowfall at Alta and ENSO (see
Outlook for the 2013–2014 Ski Season), as illustrated by the reproduced figure below.
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Three month (NDJ, DJF, JFM, FMA) accumulated snowfall at Alta–Guard vs. the
corresponding ENSO index. Courtesy Jeff Massey. |
So, regardless of what you see in the news, or crazy ideas about caterpillar fur or groundhogs, nobody can say with any reliability what this year will be like in the Cottonwoods We have roughly equal chances of a below average, average, or above average snow year.
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