ENSO season tracker · 2026–27
Live NOAA data on this winter's El Niño, and which resorts on your pass are best placed for it.
NOAA CPC · week of Oct 14, 2026
Save imageEach bar is one Niño region's sea surface temperature against its 1991–2020 average. The warmest water sits off South America, which makes this an eastern-Pacific event. Those years push the subtropical jet across the southern US, which usually means a wet Southwest and a dry Pacific Northwest.
Oct 14, 2026 · +3.3 °C · Very Strong El NiñoPeak in view +3.3 · Oct 7, 2026Hover to read a week
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Probabilities, not promises
Every resort has a coefficient for how its winter precipitation responded to past El Niños. That gets scaled by how strong the current event is and where its warmest water sits. Eastern-Pacific events steer the subtropical jet across the southern US, so the south gets storms the north misses.
El Niño winters run warm, so how high the snow falls matters more than how often it storms. A resort with a high base keeps the snow. A low one gets the same storm as rain. Stronger events push the snow line higher, so low resorts lose more.
Once snow shows up in the forecast, the 16-day NOAA GFS run takes over, mixed 65/35 with the seasonal signal. Before the season starts every point reads zero, so the app ranks on the seasonal signal and tells you it is doing so.
Alterra and Vail both adjust their rosters and blackout calendars between announcement and season, and secondary sources disagree on the details. The operators' own destination pages are the authority.
This is a model, not a NOAA product. Every ocean and forecast number here comes from NOAA. The ranking built on them is this app's own, based on published ENSO composite patterns. For NOAA's official probability forecast, see the CPC seasonal outlook below.
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18 destinations
Save imageKirkwood scores highest on the Epic pass right now, at 88.
Full pass · unlimited at every Vail Resorts mountain. Ranking on the seasonal ENSO signal. The 16-day forecast is dry everywhere, so there is nothing live to rank yet.
Telluride
Colorado
No snow in the 16-day model window at this grid point.
Grid elevation 2,688 m · 5 day(s) warm enough for rain
∞ unlimited · * blackouts · † caveat