Super El Niño is shaping up to turbocharge snowfall this winter, and Mammoth Mountain Ski Area looks like one of the clearest winners. The NOAA Climate Prediction Center is forecasting a greater-than-83-percent chance of a strong-to-very strong El Niño likely from January through March, a setup that could funnel more storms into the West.
That is why the Accuweather El Niño winter map US search is drawing attention now. The strengthened subtropical jet stream is expected to favor an active southern storm track and wetter-than-normal conditions for the southern tier of the United States, with the Southwest, the Southern Rockies and California’s Sierra Nevada all favored by the pattern. For ski areas, that is the kind of outlook that can turn a normal season into a very different one.
Mammoth Mountain Ski Area has the kind of history that makes the forecast hard to ignore. During the 2015-2016 very strong El Niño, it logged a near-average season of 393 inches, but the 1982-1983 Super El Niño delivered 546.3 inches there. In 1983, the mountain picked up 118 inches in January and 112 inches in March, enough to stretch the ski season through late July. That is the benchmark behind the current excitement: a strong El Niño can be generous, but it does not promise the same result every time.
The catch is that this winter is not just about El Niño. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation is entering a cooling phase, and a strong El Niño paired with a cool PDO is described as a highly unusual combination last seen in the 1972-73 winter. That makes the setup notable, but also harder to read. Ski Portillo has shown how extreme these patterns can be, with multiple snow dumps totaling over 30 inches in a few days in late August and a season that neared 500 inches, while Juneau, Alaska recorded 201.2 inches during the 2006-7 winter. Even with that kind of history on the books, not every mountain in the West is headed for a stellar snow season.
What happens next is the real test. NOAA expects the strongest El Niño conditions to arrive from January through March, and the opening months of that stretch should show whether the forecast turns into a boom for the Southwest, the Southern Rockies and California’s Sierra Nevada, or whether the snow lands unevenly and leaves some resorts with much less than the headlines suggest.
The broader pattern still points to the places that usually lead the snow race: mountain towns and the Great Lakes. But this winter’s combination of Super El Niño, a cooling PDO and the recent polar vortex behavior is unusual enough that the safest call is the simplest one — Mammoth Mountain Ski Area has a strong case for a big season, while the rest of the West will have to wait and see how the storms actually line up.
