The El Niño Ski Season 2026-27 Could Be the Biggest in Decades

The El Niño ski season 2026-27 is shaping up to be historic, with a powerful El Niño is building rapidly in the Pacific Ocean. Forecasters now believe it has a real chance of becoming one of the strongest events ever recorded.

• Related: How Does El Niño Influence Snowfall Over the United States?

The Climate Prediction Center, part of NOAA, released its latest ENSO update on August 13, and the report describes an El Niño that is intensifying faster than many expected just a month ago. Sea surface temperatures in the key Niño-3.4 region reached 1.4 degrees Celsius above normal in July, while the water below the surface has warmed even more dramatically, with anomalies reaching 10 degrees Celsius at depth in the eastern Pacific, a sign of just how much heat has built up beneath the ocean’s surface.

Forecasters now give this event a greater than 90% chance of reaching “very strong” status by the time fall and winter arrive, and there’s a 69% chance it becomes the strongest El Niño since record-keeping began in 1950. The pattern is expected to peak sometime between October and December before gradually weakening through the early spring months.

• Related: El Niño 2026-27 Is Accelerating. NOAA’s July Ski Forecast Has New Winners and Clearer Losers

What El Niño Does to Weather

El Niño forms when unusually warm water spreads across the equatorial Pacific, and that warmth reshapes the jet stream, the fast-moving river of air high in the atmosphere that steers storms across North America. During El Niño winters, that jet stream typically dips farther south than usual, which tends to mean more storms and more snow, for the southern half of the ski map, while the northern half often gets left comparatively dry.

• Related: OpenSnow Predicts Record “Super El Niño” Winter with Massive Southwest Powder Potential and High Temperature Risk

None of this guarantees a specific outcome at any single resort, since local terrain, elevation, and short-term weather patterns still matter enormously. But it does tilt the broader odds in a fairly predictable direction, one that skiers and snowboarders have seen play out in past El Niño winters.

Where the El Niño Ski Season 2026-27 Delivers the Most Snow

Early outlooks favor above-normal snowfall across California, Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Colorado this season, and forecasters see a real possibility that Utah could benefit too, particularly during storms that track through the Great Basin on their way east. A strengthening El Niño raises the odds of active storm cycles across those states, along with possible benefits for Utah when storms track through the Great Basin.

• Related: What Actually Causes El Niño — And Why It Changes Winter Everywhere

Colorado’s southern mountains, in particular, look well-positioned heading into the season. The San Juan range, home to Wolf Creek, Telluride, and Silverton, sits in the zone most likely to benefit from this pattern.

Losers: The Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies

The picture looks considerably tougher farther north, where a warmer and less reliable pattern appears increasingly likely to define the season. Skiers and snowboarders across Idaho, Oregon, and Washington should plan for a warmer, drier, and more variable season, with El Niño pushing the odds away from deep midwinter powder. The Northern Rockies face a similar risk, since El Niño tends to pull the jet stream toward the southern U.S. and away from the north, leaving fewer storms to reach those mountains.

Why the El Niño Ski Season 2026-27 Runs Warm in the Northwest

Warmth, more than a simple lack of moisture, appears to be the bigger threat in some of these areas. Even where overall snowfall totals hold up reasonably well, forecasters expect more precipitation to fall as rain rather than snow at lower and mid elevations, especially across Washington and Montana, which could undercut base depths even in years with decent storm activity.

The Northeast: No Clear Signal

New England skiers shouldn’t expect much useful guidance from El Niño this time around, at least not compared with what the pattern offers forecasters trying to read the West. The outlook for that region remains fairly neutral, without a strong signal pointing toward either a wetter or drier storm track than usual. That leaves the Northeast largely dependent on shorter-range forecasting once the season actually begins, rather than on the broader seasonal signal El Niño provides elsewhere.

How the El Niño Ski Season 2026-27 Compares to Japan’s Snow Window

One detail may work in favor of Western resorts relative to some popular international destinations. Japan’s ski season depends heavily on a fairly narrow climatological window, typically running from mid-December through mid-February, during which the overwhelming majority of its snow tends to fall, with totals dropping off substantially before and after that stretch. The western United States doesn’t operate under quite the same constraints, since big, season-defining storms there can still arrive as late as March or even early April, giving Rocky Mountain and Sierra resorts a longer runway to make up ground even if December and January turn out leaner than hoped.

What to Watch Next

NOAA updates its outlook every month, and the next ENSO Diagnostic Discussion is scheduled for release on September 10. Skiers hoping to track how the season is developing, region by region, should keep an eye on the Niño-3.4 index itself along with the CPC’s evolving seasonal outlook maps, which together tend to offer the clearest available read on where the odds are shifting as the calendar moves toward opening day.

For now, the message for skiers and riders is fairly straightforward, even if the details will keep sharpening in the months ahead: the Southwest and southern Rockies have genuine reason for optimism, the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies face a considerably harder road, and most everywhere else sits somewhere in between. Nothing about this winter is locked in yet, and El Niño, however historic it may turn out to be, only sets the odds. It doesn’t decide the outcome.