Let’s be honest, it has not been a great winter. Warm and dry. Snow in bursts, but not a ton. And it hasn’t really stuck. In Denver today, on January 31, it was 65 degrees. That’s not great. The effects of El Niño have been pretty damn recognizable. The weather heading into the Spring, though, could be a little different.
AccuWeather has released their 2024 U.S. Spring Forecast, something we’ve been pretty eager to see. Honestly, though, it doesn’t seem like things are going to be that exciting for skiers and snowboarders. El Niño has already started to break down in the Pacific, but we’ll likely continue to see El Niño weather patterns into the warmer months.
Parts of the southwest and some of the plain states (parts of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Kansas, and Oklahoma) could expect an extension of winter weather headed into the spring, while the states furthest north (Minnesota, Wyoming, Montana, the Dakotas, etc.) might see a bit of an early ending to the winter. New England, and other parts of the North East, may start to see spring weather mid-March and early April.
It’s barely even started to feel like winter. Skiing earlier this week felt like either mid-December or mid-April skiing, certainly not late January. Fingers crossed that this upcoming storm actually puts some snow on the ground for the ski areas of the west.
As for the spring weather, well, this forecast kind of just feels like more of the same. We’ll have to see what the groundhog says. I think now all we can do is hope that El Niño will leave us for a while come this spring and next year will look a bit more like last year than this year.
Related: Direct Weather: Atmospheric River Update, Flooding + Feet of Snowfall
Image Credit: AccuWeather via YouTube