Click the link to read the article on the Water Education Colorado website (Caroline Llanes):

January 8, 2026

As guests ski and ride down Schoolmarm, a stretch of beginner-friendly terrain at Keystone Resort in Colorado, they are treated to views of Dillon Reservoir nearly the whole way down. More eagle-eyed skiers and riders will notice that snowmaking machines line the run’s three miles, which spans from summit to base.

On a sunny, cloudless November day, it’s one of the resort’s only accessible ski runs with much of the credit going to those machines. 

“It gives pretty much everybody the ability to ski here on day one,” said Kate Schifani, the resort’s senior director of mountain operations. She says Keystone is super focused on that early opening day.

“We are the first resort in the country to open,” she said, referring to the 2025 season. “So we put a lot of stock in what we can do early-season, and having great snowmaking helps us do that.”

It’s a familiar problem for Rocky Mountain ski resorts over the last 20 years, which have become increasingly prone to scant early season snow. [ed. emphasis mine] Many have chosen to stick with their traditional opening days near the Thanksgiving holiday and take the gamble that snow might arrive in time. To match their guests’ demands for skiable acreage amid a warming climate, resorts are doubling down on snowmaking technology and acquiring the water rights needed to make it happen. 

Winter is off to a slow start across the West this year. Snowpack is below average in every major river basin across the entire region. That’s a concern for ski resorts, many of which have delayed their opening days. That includes Jackson Hole in Wyoming, Alta in Utah, and Beaver Creek, just down the highway from Keystone.

Human-caused climate change has changed the way precipitation falls in the mountains, especially in autumn. As more early season storm clouds bring rain instead of snow, resorts are increasingly relying on snowmaking to give their guests the ability to ski at all. 

But this year, it wasn’t just a lack of snow that caused resorts headaches. November was warm as well, which also affects snowmaking operations. Throughout the Upper Colorado River Basin, temperatures were anywhere from five to eight degrees above average, with much of Utah setting records. Denver logged its warmest November day ever this year.

Schifani said ideally, snowmaking happens when it’s colder than 28 degrees.

“So it’s 32.7 degrees right now,” she said, checking the temperature on a monitor attached to one of the snow guns at the top of the River Run gondola. “So we’re just a little too warm for snowmaking.”

Keystone made upgrades to its snowmaking system in 2019, so all of its guns are relatively new. Each one has a weather system built into it, detecting temperature and relative humidity. They’re all automated, so when it finally drops below 28 degrees, the guns turn on with a loud rumble.

“This gun will know as it gets colder, we can add more water, we can make more snow,” Schifani explained. “As it gets warmer, we cut back on the water, we make a little bit less snow until it gets too warm for us to make snow at all.”

Once it’s cold enough, man-made snow takes about two parts compressed air and one part water. Unlike other uses in the West that transport water over long distances to sprawling cities or faraway farm fields, snowmaking keeps water close to where it originated. 

Steven Fassnacht, a professor of snow hydrology at Colorado State University, said that about 80% of the water used in snowmaking goes back into the watershed it came from.

“[Ski resorts] are taking water out of the river, out of a reservoir … and they’re putting it on the mountain and they’re storing it somewhere different for the winter,” he said. “So the actual use, we call it consumptive use, the amount of water that leaves the system is relatively small.”

But that use still matters in a region where every drop of water is accounted for. Fassnacht said it will matter even more as the region’s climate gets warmer and drier, and as competition for water ramps up. 

“In drier conditions, maybe that water use — possibly, likely — that consumptive use is actually going to increase,” he said. “And it may be harder to actually get that water out of the system to put on the mountains.”

Ski areas’ water usage can get contentious. Telluride Resort is currently in a dispute with the town of Mountain Village over its water use, and a federal court recently dismissed a lawsuit from Purgatory, a resort near Durango, over accessing decades-old groundwater rights on Forest Service land.

Chris Cushing is a principal with the consulting firm SE Group, which works on mountain planning for resorts across the country.

He recently worked with Deer Valley in Utah on a massive expansion: the resort added ten new chairlifts and doubled its skiable terrain, which it plans to open this season — with a state of the art snowmaking system. 

“It’s just massive, it’s literally building a new ski resort,” he said of the expansion, which is called East Village.

Cushing says the expansion was only possible because the land acquired by Deer Valley already had water rights allocated to it — a calculation many other resorts he works with are having to factor in their plans as well.

“Absolutely the first question I ask is, ‘what’s your water situation?’” he said.

Long-term drought means ski resorts aren’t just in the game of acquiring new supplies, but also how to make the water they do have go further.

In 2023, Keystone added a new chairlift, providing skiers and riders easier access to its Bergman Bowl, which used to be an area only hikers could reach. Schifani says the resort expanded its snowmaking system to blanket that area at will too.

“But for perspective, that didn’t take any more water than we had previously used because we just got better at using what we already have,” she said.

It’s not yet clear what this winter will bring for the ski industry, but resorts, like other water users across the West, will have to prepare for the reality of doing more with less.

This story was produced in partnership with The Water Desk at the University of Colorado Boulder Center for Environmental Journalism.

Alejandro N. Flores, Boise State University

Much of the western U.S. has started 2026 in the midst of a snow drought. That might sound surprising, given the record precipitation from atmospheric rivers hitting the region in recent weeks, but those storms were actually part of the problem.

To understand this year’s snow drought – and why conditions like this are a growing concern for western water supplies – let’s look at what a snow drought is and what happened when atmospheric river storms arrived in December.

What is a snow drought?

Typically, hydrologists like me measure the snowpack by the amount of water it contains. When the snowpack’s water content is low compared with historical conditions, you’re looking at a snow drought.

A snow drought can delayed ski slope opening dates and cause poor early winter recreation conditions.

It can also create water supply problems the following summer. The West’s mountain snowpack has historically been a dependable natural reservoir of water, providing fresh water to downstream farms, orchards and cities as it slowly melts. The U.S. Geological Survey estimates that up to 75% of the region’s annual water supply depends on snowmelt.

Snow drought is different from other types of drought because its defining characteristic is lack of water in a specific form – snow – but not necessarily the lack of water, per se. A region can be in a snow drought during times of normal or even above-normal precipitation if temperatures are warm enough that precipitation falls as rain when snow would normally be expected.

This form of snow drought – known as a warm snow drought – is becoming more prevalent as the climate warms, and it’s what parts of the West have been seeing so far this winter.

How an atmospheric river worsened the snow drought

Washington state saw the risks in early December 2025 when a major atmospheric river storm dumped record precipitation in parts of the Pacific Northwest. Up to 24 inches fell in the Cascade Mountains between Dec. 1 and Dec. 15. The Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes at Scripps Oceanographic Institute documented reports of flooding, landslides and damage to several highways that could take months to repair. Five stream gauges in the region reached record flood levels, and 16 others exceeded “major flood” status.

Yet, the storm paradoxically left the region’s water supplies worse off in its wake.

The reason was the double-whammy nature of the event: a large, mostly rainstorm occurring against the backdrop of an uncharacteristically warm autumn across the western U.S.

Atmospheric rivers act like a conveyor belt, carrying water from warm, tropical regions. The December storm and the region’s warm temperatures conspired to produce a large rainfall event, with snow mostly limited to areas above 9,000 feet in elevation, according to data from the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes.

The rainfall melted a significant amount of snow in mountain watersheds, which contributed to the flooding in Washington state. The melting also decreased the amount of water stored in the snowpack by about 50% in the Yakima River Basin over the course of that event.

As global temperatures rise, forecasters expect to see more precipitation falling as rain in the late fall and early spring rather than snow compared with the past. This rain can melt existing snow, contributing to snow drought as well as flooding and landslides.

What’s ahead

Fortunately, it’s still early in the 2026 winter season. The West’s major snow accumulation months are generally from now until March, and the western snowpack could recover.

More snow has since fallen in the Yakima River Basin, which has made up the snow water storage it lost during the December storm, although it was still well below historical norms in early January 2026.

Scientists and water resource managers are working on ways to better predict snow drought and its effects several weeks to months ahead. Researchers are also seeking to better understand how individual storms produce rain and snow so that we can improve snowpack forecasting – a theme of recent work by my research group.

As temperatures warm and snow droughts become more common, this research will be essential to help water resources managers, winter sports industries and everyone else who relies on snow to prepare for the future.

Alejandro N. Flores, Associate Professor of Geoscience, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

❄️ 75-year annual snowfall trend. Snowfall is decreasing almost everywhere during this period. It's as if something has changed. 😐😢😭

— Climatologist49 (@climatologist49.bsky.social) 2026-01-09T05:03:58.139Z

Click the link to read the discussion on the NOAA website:

January 8, 2026

ENSO Alert System Status: La Niña Advisory

Synopsis:  La Niña persists, followed by a 75% chance of a transition to ENSO-neutral during January-March 2026. ENSO-neutral is likely through at least Northern Hemisphere late spring 2026.

In December 2025, La Niña was reflected in the continuation of below-average sea surface temperatures (SSTs) across the east-central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean. The latest weekly Niño-3.4 index value was -0.5°C, with the Niño-3 and Niño-1+2 indices remaining cooler at -0.8°C and -0.7°C, respectively. The equatorial subsurface temperature index (average from 180°-100°W) became slightly positive, reflecting the expansion of above-average temperatures from the western to the east-central Pacific at depth. Atmospheric anomalies across the tropical Pacific Ocean remained consistent with La Niña. For most of the month, easterly wind anomalies were present over the central equatorial Pacific, and upper-level westerly wind anomalies continued across the equatorial Pacific. Enhanced convection persisted over Indonesia and suppressed convection strengthened near the Date Line. The equatorial Southern Oscillation index was positive. Collectively, the coupled ocean-atmosphere system remains consistent with La Niña.

The IRI multi-model predictions indicate ENSO-neutral will emerge during January-March (JFM) 2026. In conjunction with the North American Multi-Model Ensemble, the team favors ENSO-neutral to develop during JFM 2026. Even after equatorial Pacific SSTs transition to ENSO-neutral, La Niña may still have some lingering influence through the early Northern Hemisphere spring 2026 (e.g., CPC’s seasonal outlooks). For longer forecast horizons, there are growing chances of El Niño, though there remains uncertainty given the lower accuracy of model forecasts through the spring. In summary, La Niña persists, followed by a 75% chance of a transition to ENSO-neutral during January-March 2026. ENSO-neutral is likely through at least Northern Hemisphere late spring 2026.