Winter 2026–27

A strong El Niño is steering storms toward California

Washington and California sit on opposite sides of the Pacific storm track. When that track slides south, one mountain range tends to fill in and the other tends to miss. This winter, the ocean is pushing the track south.

Three things to take with you

  1. 1

    The warm water moves the highway. El Niño and La Niña are a slow shift of warm water along the equator. Storms follow the jet stream, and the jet stream follows that warm water.

  2. 2

    The two states trade places. A south-shifted jet aims more storms at California and leaves Washington warmer and more often skipped. La Niña does the reverse.

  3. 3

    This winter leans California, and it can still surprise you. A strong El Niño raises the odds. It does not book a powder day, and warmth can turn a “wet” forecast into rain.

1. The warm water moves the highway

Most winters, storms that hit the West Coast were born over the Pacific and steered by the jet stream, a fast river of wind high above the ocean. That river does not sit still. It is tugged by where the tropical Pacific is warmest, because warm water feeds the thunderstorms that disturb the flow farther north.

In a La Niña, the warmest water piles up in the western Pacific, near Indonesia. The jet tends to come ashore up north, around Washington and southern British Columbia. In an El Niño, the trade winds slacken and the warm water spreads east, into the central and eastern Pacific. The jet is pulled south and east with it, and storms come ashore closer to California.

The drawings below are a picture of that shift, not a weather map. Watch where the warm patch sits, and where the jet makes landfall.

A typical La Niña keeps the jet aimed at Washington. A typical El Niño bends it south, toward California. The warm patch is the part of the equatorial Pacific running hotter than usual.

2. The two states trade places

Skiers do not ski “precipitation.” They ski snow that stays on a hill. The same southward shift that helps California does two things to Washington: fewer storms arrive, and the ones that do arrive often come with milder air. The snow line, the elevation where rain turns to snow, climbs the mountain. A mid-slope that was snow in a colder year can be rain.

California’s bargain is different. More storms is the favorable part. The catch is temperature, especially this kind of winter, when northern California is also expected to run warm. High in the Sierra, a wet storm is still likely to fall as snow. Lower down, the same storm can be a soaker. Southern California can have a huge year in a very strong El Niño, or a rainy one, depending on how high that snow line sits on the day the storm arrives.

This is also why two winters with the same name can feel unrelated at your home mountain. The jet is a seasonal tendency, not a rail. It wobbles week to week. A few weeks aimed a few hundred miles north or south of the seasonal average, or a single atmospheric river, can outweigh the nickname on the winter.

Illustrative, not a measurement. In the typical pattern, storms and a lower snow line favor Washington during La Niña, and favor the higher California peaks during El Niño. Rain falls below the dashed line.

3. This winter leans California

On October 8, 2026, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center said El Niño was still strengthening. The Niño-3.4 region of the equatorial Pacific, the patch forecasters use to keep score, was about 2.1°C warmer than average. A strong to very strong El Niño is likely to last through January–March 2027, and NOAA put the chance of that continuing above 83 percent.

The U.S. Winter Outlook, released October 15, follows that setup. Wetter than average weather is favored across much of California. Warmer than average weather is favored across the Pacific Northwest and northern California. Eastern Washington is one of the places where drought is more likely to develop or worsen by the end of January.

For someone planning a ski season, the plain reading is: the storm highway is favored to sit over California more often than over Washington, and the air over both the Northwest and northern California is favored to be milder than usual. High Sierra peaks are in the best seat. Washington ski areas are more exposed to missed storms and to rain on the lower mountain. Neither outcome is locked. NOAA’s own wording is that a strong event makes the usual impacts more likely, and still does not guarantee them.

California

Wetter than average is favored across much of the state. Northern California is also favored to be warmer, so elevation matters. The high Sierra is where extra storms are most likely to stack up as snow.

The mark at +2.1°C is the latest Niño-3.4 reading from NOAA’s October 8, 2026 discussion, not a forecast and not a seasonal average. El Niño is declared at +0.5°C. Strong events are generally those that reach +1.5°C or more over a season; very strong events reach +2.0°C or more.

What to watch after opening day is the jet itself, not the headline. If it stays south for weeks at a time, California keeps collecting storms and Washington keeps waiting. If it snaps north for a month, Washington can still steal a cycle of snow. And on any single storm, the number that matters at the lodge is the snow line.