If the snow this week in Central Oregon is not enough to get skiers and snowboarders excited for the coming season, then the long-term forecast should.
Another La Niña is predicted, meaning cooler temperatures and more snow for ski areas through December and January.
“We’re going into fairly similar conditions as last winter,” said Larry O’Neill, director of Oregon Climate Services at Oregon State University in Corvallis. “It might be slightly weaker than last year, but probably not significantly different as far as La Niña goes. Right now we’re in a weak La Niña, but it’s just on the edge of being a moderate one. Last year we were barely into the moderate one.”
El Niño — which usually makes for a warmer and drier Northwest winter — and La Niña are seasonal weather patterns driven by sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean.
Mt. Bachelor ski area, which typically attempts to open for winter operations on Thanksgiving weekend each year, plans to open on Nov. 25, provided there is enough snow to open its base areas.
With a base elevation of 6,300 feet, Bachelor can pretty much count on getting decent snow every winter. But that is no longer the case for smaller ski resorts like Willamette Pass (base elevation 5,128 feet) and Hoodoo (base elevation 4,668 feet). Those resorts typically try to open by early to mid-December, before the winter holidays.
The snow this week in Central Oregon are early signs of the La Nina, according to O’Neill.
“This year it’s cooling off pretty quickly,” he said. “So the outlook is actually fairly similar to what it was last year in that La Niñas tend to be cooler than normal with more precipitation than normal. For the most part that means better snowpack, on average.”
While La Niñas make for cooler and snowier Northwest winters, they make for warmer and drier winters in the Southwest. The variable is where that dividing line is. It is somewhere in Oregon, according to O’Neill.
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