Winter 2026-2027 Speculation

[MarcmmKU]

1 hour ago, powderfreak said:

I’m not worried about 2015-16 because that was something so absurd and record breaking that I think even that pattern repeated again would be snowier.

Maybe that’s a poor assumption on my part but at least on Mount Mansfield where most of my knowledge is rooted in, I take some comfort in that even a standard deviation on the bad side of normal is still a lot snowier than 15-16.

I do think there’s definitely concern about a strong El Niño though.  But there’s a fine line in there where our normals are cold enough to snow decently even with a +4 or +5 winter month (could also be heavy snows at elevation, lackluster in valleys)… but it’s once it gets to +7 or +8 that we often tip the scale to real bad at all elevations.

We’ve also seen the El Ninos that have had below normal snow and snowpack down where people live but 2,000+ feet is buried in multiple marginal events.

March 2026 in the American west seemed absurd too until it happened.

[40/70 Benchmark]

15 hours ago, dendrite said:

@CoastalWx @40/70 Benchmark Thoughts?

Reasonable outcome, but I don't put much stock in the output, otherwise.

[George001]

19 hours ago, Great Snow 1717 said:

Seems like he expects an odd  main storm track for those 2 months...

I could see something like that happening. Super Nino patterns tend to be warm and wet with an active storm track. It looks like he is expecting a classing appalachian runner storm track that leads to big snows for the mountains and interior regions, while the coastal areas/1-95 corridor is on the wrong side of the storm track and gets rain instead. The interior regions, elevations and northern areas have a bit more room for error with the warm anomalies than the I-95 does in terms of the precip staying frozen.

[Great Snow 1717]

2 minutes ago, George001 said:

I could see something like that happening. Super Nino patterns tend to be warm and wet with an active storm track. It looks like he is expecting a classing appalachian runner storm track that leads to big snows for the mountains and interior regions, while the coastal areas/1-95 corridor is on the wrong side of the storm track and gets rain instead. The interior regions, elevations and northern areas have a bit more room for error with the warm anomalies than the I-95 does in terms of the precip staying frozen.

I was basing that on his odd maps..

[CoastalWx]

He's just regurgitating what the ECMWF shows. 

[forkyfork]

warm and rainy