I am pretty sure that we must be turning the corner from summer season to the fall season. The Labor Day ski and snowboard sales are on everyone’s minds and my Facebook news feed is full of friends talking about equipment they have scored, or hope to sell. What really tells me that skiing is on people’s mind is that people keep asking me what I think will happen with the weather this season. Some of the other local sites have already jumped in and reposted any report that suggest it’s going to be a great winter, even resorting to posting the forecast from the Farmer’s Almanac.
In a nutshell, the early prognostications are beginning to sync up, not only in the outcome, but in the science behind the predictions. In case you choose to stop reading soon, here’s the spoiler: The winter may get off to a slow start this year, but should then turn into a good snow year, resulting in probably greater than average snowfall and a bit warmer than average. We’re not talking pineapple express warm, just Sierra cement warm. Keep reading for the details…
Bryan Allegretto at OpenSnow.com, formerly the TahoeWeatherDiscussion.com, really has been the “go to guy” for Tahoe weather for several seasons in a row. He correctly called the weather patterns for 10-11 (the big year), 11-12 (the disappointing year), and 12-13 (a year to forget). BA is calling for a season that is basically the reverse of last season. That means we start off in an ENSO neutral pattern and move into a mild El Niño this season. So instead of starting off with a bang, then fizzling out, we may get a later start, then build into a solid season. BA often talks about “analog years”, which simply put means to look back for years in history where the ocean temperatures, currents and other climate factors look most similar to the current year, then use that season to suggest what may happen this year. For this season, the pattern looks similar to 09-10.
NOAA is calling for a similar thing for the early season. The 3 month outlook matches up with with BA. If you dig deeper into the seasonal outlooks, there is less agreement. They are calling for equal chances of above and below normal precipitation during the core of the ski season. The discussion there is hinting at very weak El Niño conditions in the West.
UnofficialNetworks and Snowbrains both picked up on the forecast from Rob Guarino at LiveWeatherBlogs.com. Apparently Rob is pretty good at forecasting the weather and produced a forecast that seems pretty favorable for us this winter. He’s not local and his forecast really is not specific to Tahoe, or even the Sierra Nevada range. His blog formatting leaves something to be desired, best described as a mashup of your 7th grade Science textbook and USA Today. I’m curious to check out Rob’s later updates on the winter season.
The Weather Geek at TahoeLoco.com and Paul at the TahoeWeatherBlog.com have not checked in yet with a winter forecast.
Last April, we posted our study of weather history in Tahoe. It showed that we have only seen 3 really low years in a row once in the last 130 years. We really are due for a better snow season in Tahoe. If we start off a bit weak, it will give Alpine Meadows a chance to demonstrate the value of the snowmaking system upgrades that are in progress. We sure hope we haven’t jinxed anything by talking about it!
If only the fact that we’ve had two straight bad years meant anything statistically. It’s a reverse Monty Hall problem. (IIRC)
Yes, if we looked at just those two years in isolation, looking at no other data – then it’s more like a coin toss event. If I flip a coin twice and get heads – it has absolutely nothing to do with what happens next as they are independent events. I can flip a coin 100 times in a row and get heads – but the next toss is still a 50-50 chance of tails.
In the case of weather history, there’s a couple of differences. The post I made back in April studied 130 years of data, and in that time period, we only had three bad years in a row once. The thing is that weather years are NOT independent events. There are a number of different cycles and factors that lead to our weather and those same factors affect all weather years. Therefore, weather years are dependent events and what happens in one or two years could affect what happens the third year.
I don’t think the Monty Hall principle applies here – but I’ll state I would much rather win a car than a goat!
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