Early Utah snow has skiers dreaming, but it’s too soon to call the season

UTAH — Early snow reports are trickling in from Utah’s high-elevation mountains and ski resorts.

Both Brian Head in Southern Utah and Snowbird near Salt Lake City shared recent photos showing shallow dustings of snow. Hikers have also shared photos of snow on some of Utah’s highest peaks.

Unfortunately for winter enthusiasts, early-season snow has never been a reliable indicator of the powder days to come.

“Early season snow (unfortunately) says nothing about what the rest of the season will hold,” wrote Joel Gratz, founding meteorologist of OpenSnow. He added that September dustings can be a “welcome sight, but it’s not a good forecasting tool.”

September and October storms can leave a fresh coating of snow at high elevations before warmer autumn weather returns, and individual early-season storms don’t establish the pattern that will determine Utah’s winter snowpack.

The powder days are still in the future, but that doesn’t stop winter enthusiasts from seeing any hope where they can get it.

Reports of a potentially record-breaking “Super” El Niño have been fueling stoke for a snowy winter, with some social media posts and long-range forecasts pointing toward the possibility of an active season across the West.

For Utah, however, the relationship between El Niño and snowfall is more complicated.

What El Niño could mean for Utah

Jonathan Jennings with the Utah Division of Water Resources said the developing El Niño is creating an unusual setup heading into winter.

“We have a really interesting scenario ahead of us in terms of what this winter looks like because we have a record-breaking El Niño developing,” Jennings said.

El Niño is a recurring climate pattern driven by warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. It can influence the position of the jet stream and storm tracks across the Western U.S., although its effects vary by region and from one event to another.

Jennings said El Niño is already influencing weather patterns across the West, pointing to unusually wet conditions in parts of the Southwest and recent precipitation records in Utah.

“And if you look at the analogs — what years were similar to this — really, there is no year that’s similar to this in terms of El Niño,” Jennings said. “But years that were pretty strong did result in some high precipitation and snow in Park City.”

That lack of a close historical analog makes the coming winter particularly difficult to compare with past seasons.

Still, Jennings said the outlook has him increasingly optimistic about Utah’s snow season.

“So there’s certainly hope ahead of us in terms of what this winter is going to look like, and I’m starting to buy into that a little bit right now. I do think we’re going to have a pretty solid winter across Utah,” he said before hastily adding, “I probably should have said the opposite because I probably just jinxed it.”