With all this talk of El Niño making his prodigal return this winter, you may be wondering what does this mean for Tahoe? Big snow, wet snow, snow with pineapple flakes in it? I mean, what is El Niño after all?

Wonder no more . . . here’s your official guide to El Niño!

First, an introduction . . .

No seriously.  Here is what it means.

El Niño is an oscillation of the ocean-atmosphere system in the tropical Pacific. Basically, the Pacific ocean warms up a bit, which causes the winds to weaken, which causes the ocean to get warmer, which causes the winds to weaken . . you get the idea. So what does this mean for Tahoe? Check out this nifty map:

But here’s the tricky part – where will the storm track be? Lake Tahoe is right on the edge. It could be above us, it could be below us.

So we could have a monster winter. Or we could not have a monster winter.

Well, which is it you cry out in despair? History has given us fantastic El Niño winters! The last big one was the winter of 1997/1998 and if you were around for that winter, you probably haven’t forgotten it. It was a HUGE winter! Record-breaking snowfalls, powder up to your eyeballs for days, amazing conditions for just about everything (tree skiing, learning how to ski/ride, enjoying a day cruising the groomers). That much snow makes everything more fun.

So as you start to think about winter, send some El Niño vibes out to the Pacific and pray for the storm track to be above us.