{"id":51542,"date":"2020-09-15T01:29:39","date_gmt":"2020-09-15T07:29:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-will-la-nina-mean-for-winter-in-southwest-colorado\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:56:25","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T09:56:25","slug":"what-will-la-nina-mean-for-winter-in-southwest-colorado","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/what-will-la-nina-mean-for-winter-in-southwest-colorado\/","title":{"rendered":"What will La Ni\u00f1a mean for winter in Southwest Colorado?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"The
The Climate Predication Center expects a 75% chance of a La Ni\u00f1a pattern forming between December and February. La Ni\u00f1a patterns typically bring below-average snowpack to the mountains of Southwest Colorado.<\/span>Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Avid skiers, sit down \u2013 could 2020 bring any more bad news?<\/p>\n

Yes, of course: The Climate Prediction Center<\/a> forecasts a 75% chance of a La Ni\u00f1a winter forming from December through February.<\/p>\n

La Ni\u00f1a winters typically bring below-average snowpacks to the mountains of Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you get north of 70%, a La Ni\u00f1a is likely,\u201d said Michelle L\u2019Heureux, a meteorologist with the Climate Prediction Center who worked on the group\u2019s forecast.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo, we\u2019re anticipating it will be unfolding, but there\u2019s a 25% chance that it won\u2019t form,\u201d she said. \u201cSo I wouldn\u2019t rule out having average or even above-average snowpack. It\u2019s just that right now, with what we\u2019re seeing, that looks unlikely,\u201d<\/p>\n

L\u2019Heureux offered other details about La Ni\u00f1as that offer some glimmer of hope to skiers.<\/p>\n

Southwest Colorado is at the northern extremity of where La Ni\u00f1as cause declines in snowpacks, with the mountains of New Mexico more likely to be impacted by a dry winter than the San Juan Mountains of Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

Also, the Climate Prediction Center expects La Ni\u00f1a to form only from December through February, and L\u2019Heureux noted the biggest snow month in Colorado is typically March and that most snow falls in late winter and early spring in the state.<\/p>\n

\u201cBy the time you get into spring by March, April and May, we\u2019re actually slightly favoring a neutral outlook. So we don\u2019t anticipate a long-lasting drying event that would stretch well into next year,\u201d L\u2019Heureux said.<\/p>\n

La Ni\u00f1a, Spanish for little girl, is a natural atmospheric phenomenon marked by cooler-than-average surface sea temperatures in the central and eastern Pacific Ocean near the equator. It is the climatological opposite of El Ni\u00f1o, Spanish for little boy, a climatological pattern that favors above-average snowpack in Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

\"The
The Climate Predication Center expects a 75% chance of a La Ni\u00f1a pattern forming between December and February. La Ni\u00f1a patterns typically bring below-average snowpack to the mountains of Southwest Colorado.<\/span>du1-i-syn<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado is right on the extreme northern edge of being affected by both La Ni\u00f1a and El Ni\u00f1o patterns, and La Ni\u00f1a actually brings colder winters with more snow to the northern United States.<\/p>\n

There is a small chance a La Ni\u00f1a might bring above-average snowfall to the northern mountains of Colorado, L\u2019Heureux said.<\/p>\n

\u201cColorado is kind of right on the border where La Ni\u00f1a favors a wetter part in the north of the hemisphere and a drier part in the southern part of the hemisphere,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

L\u2019Heureux also offered another sliver of good news \u2013 everyone should keep in mind that there\u2019s a 25% chance a La Ni\u00f1a pattern will fail to form at all this winter.<\/p>\n

The 25% chance of a failed La Ni\u00f1a pattern was a point reinforced by Roseanne Pitcher, co-owner of Wolf Creek Ski Area, which is known to get the most snow of any ski area in Colorado.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think you can make a judgment call at this point because what they\u2019re looking at is what\u2019s happening right now in September. Their model can change as we get closer to winter. We\u2019ve still got most of September, October and November before we really get to winter, and I think if you look back, these forecasts change as they get more information,\u201d Pitcher said.<\/p>\n

With the Pitcher family owning and operating Wolf Creek Ski Area since the mid-1980s, Pitcher said one thing she has learned is that weather and climate are unpredictable \u2013 with no guarantee you always get what is in the forecast.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just had a 15-inch snowstorm at Wolf Creek that came out of nowhere. You know, all of a sudden it was on the radar. Nobody was forecasting that in August or even in early September. So, I really think people have to be patient and just wait to see how winter unfolds,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

parmijo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Climatological pattern favors below-average snowfall in region<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":51543,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[13,445,1164,88,372],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-51542","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-newsletter-lead","tag-snow","tag-weather-news","tag-wolf-creek-ski-area"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51542","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51542"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51542\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":87968,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51542\/revisions\/87968"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51543"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51542"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51542"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51542"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=51542"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}