Canada - el Nino?
Hearing a lot at the moment about the strong el Nino that will supposedly impact the US/Canadian winter this year. Having booked in for 3 weeks for the Canadian winter, I’ve been reading up a bit. Although the results are still inconclusive, a lot of the models seem to be pointing to a 90% chance of el Nino, some particularly strong.
Bearing in mind that a bad year in Canada typically trumps a great year in Aus/NZ, I’m not too worried, nevertheless, it points to a sub-par season, 2 years in a row.
PNW (aka Whistler) predicted to be a “loser” this winter
Will this affect anybody’s reasoning to hit west-coast Canada?
Or were you looking to go further into Canada anyway - maybe to Revvy or Big White etc?
Looks like inland and east coast may fair ok this winter.
One of these days I would love to board at night on Cypress or Grouse, overlooking the awesome city of Vancouver, descending for beers and dinner at a cool Gastown bar - maybe those days are gone though.
Or maybe you’d like to join the other circus in Japow?
Interested to hear peoples’ thoughts…
Well interestingly all i have read is that this El Nino is going to be bigger and better than the 97/98 season which was epic.
That was when I lived in Tahoe and I remember our boss talking about how Whistler was going off too (he was a die hard whistler fan).
But for what it is worth I am heading to Japan this season for a couple of weeks 
From all I’ve heard, USA and Northern Canada will do the best out of it. Southern resorts could be awesome or crap. Depending if it’s cold enough. This includes Baker and Hood in the USA north west.
Anybody got a coin?????
It’s a ski season, pretty much guaranteed that you’d have better luck predicting with a coin flip…
My best information is that Fernie hasn’t had 2 bad seasons in a row ever. And last year was terrible lol.
I’m confused, is el nino in north america good or bad for snowfall.
People in this thread imply that its good and other imply it is bad.
It brings wet weather patterns. Which if cold enough can be awesome. But if they come during the highs and warmer temps, you get rain. And nobody likes the R word…
TJ nailed it!
So it could go either way really?
So it could go either way really?
Anybody got a coin?????
LOL
Yep!
The thing with El Nino is it is an extreme weather pattern…
sooo it is either going to be really really bad or really really awesome…
Would be surprised if it was an avg season.
The thing with Whistler is it is coastal so if the temps are knife edge there is a higher risk of wetter or even clear stuff!
Yeah the reason I mentioned Western Canada is that due to the coastal location, if El Nino brings a pattern of higher than normal temps, that looks (from all of the map models anyway) to be the entry point for the big EN into Nth America/Canada. Maybe it could just be a wet Whistler winter.
A lot of reports are pointing back to the winter of 97/98 which even through an El Nino event brought decent snowfall.
Reading through the NOAA forecasts and other materials, the apparent difference of snowfall between an El Nino and regular season is less than 10%. It seems tied more to how early/late the season really kicks in.
Either way, my board has been in its bag less than a month and I’m already itching to get it back out there.
Bring on Jan 19!!!
Bring on Jan 19!!!
3 years, 4 months is a bit early to be planning a trip 
But yeah I agree with what you said. In the event of warmer winters, the coldest months are the ones that generally have the best snow. (Jan / Feb) where as in colder winters the moisture is quite often too cold to start falling and therefore it’s better in the warmer months (Everyone remembers those epic spring dumps that just keep the season going till the end).
Yeah the reason I mentioned Western Canada is that due to the coastal location, if El Nino brings a pattern of higher than normal temps, that looks (from all of the map models anyway) to be the entry point for the big EN into Nth America/Canada. Maybe it could just be a wet Whistler winter.
A lot of reports are pointing back to the winter of 97/98 which even through an El Nino event brought decent snowfall.
Reading through the NOAA forecasts and other materials, the apparent difference of snowfall between an El Nino and regular season is less than 10%. It seems tied more to how early/late the season really kicks in.
Either way, my board has been in its bag less than a month and I’m already itching to get it back out there.
Bring on Jan 19!!!
El Nino doesn’t bring higher temps…
It brings higher precipitation.
The prob is we don’t know what the temp will do!
I’ll be at Sun Peaks. An ex-pat aussie living there did a chart comparing past seaons to el-Nino events to see if there was a correlation. Bottom line: little to no correlation. I can dig out the chart if anyone is interested.
That would be good to see actually. I’m still tossing up as to whether to head inland for part of the trip to check out the other resorts - Sun Peaks looks pretty good!