First, some perspective: Most ski areas across the United States don’t come close to seeing 400 inches of snowfall, even in their best seasons. That Utah has averaged 547 inches across the past 10 seasons is marvelous.
So, a season of average or slightly below-average snowfall wouldn’t be terrible, right? Right?
That’s what Utah skiers and snowboarders may see this season, according to the forecasting site OpenSnow, which unveiled its 2025-26 season predictions Wednesday. Alan Smith, a national meteorologist for the site, compiled the report.
“The signals for this winter,” Smith wrote of Utah, “favor below-normal snowfall and above-normal temperatures for most of the state.”
Two main factors led Smith to that prediction. First, this winter likely won’t see a strong El Niño or La Niña. Often, El Niño conditions, caused by the warming of the equatorial waters of the Pacific Ocean, can be a boon for Utah’s southern resorts.
Skiers who prefer Utah’s northern mountains, meanwhile, are likely to salivate over predictions for a strong La Niña, caused by the cooling of those waters. Of the two, a weak La Niña is most likely. But according to projections from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, conditions are far more likely to be neutral between February and April, when Utah tends to receive most of its snow.
Smith also looked at the water temperatures in the North Atlantic Ocean to craft his forecast. Recently, University of Utah researcher Luke Stone found that the temperatures of those waters can strengthen or weaken the correlation between a La Niña or El Niño and the amount of precipitation (read: snow) it will drop on a certain area. And after years of warming, this year that ocean is getting colder.
(Leah Hogsten | The Salt Lake Tribune) As skiers hop on the Crescent lift, a line of thrill seekers forms at the entrance to the Flying Eagle Zip Line and the Alpine Coaster at Park City Mountain Resort, Thursday, April 5, 2018. Utah got 388 inches of snow that year, one of the worst seasons of the past decade.
Previous winters with that combination of factors “tend to favor above-normal snowfall across Western Canada, the Northern U.S. Rockies, the Great Lakes, and the Northeast,” Smith wrote. “Below-normal snowfall is favored across California, Southern Oregon, Nevada, and Utah.”
Comparable seasons, he wrote, include 2013-14, 2016-17 and 2017-18. Two of those seasons account for the state’s two lowest snowfall totals in the past 15 years. In 2017-18, a total of 388 inches landed at the Alta-Collins Snotel site, which typically serves as the state’s standard measurement location. In 2014-15, it was a dismal 325.5 inches.
In 2016-17, however, Utah skiers and snowboarders enjoyed 596.6 inches of fluff — above the 547-inch average and the fourth most in the past 15 years.
That discrepancy highlights why Evan Thayer, the Utah forecaster for OpenSnow, believes Utah skiers and snowboarders shouldn’t panic.
“My Utah context is just to remind everybody that seasonal forecasts are really just outlooks,” he wrote in a text. “At best, we are only seeing slight shifts in the probabilities of good or bad snow years, but nothing is guaranteed.”
And even if Smith’s forecast plays out, 400 inches isn’t so bad, right?
“The Wasatch Range in Utah receives the deepest snowfall in the Rockies on average,” Smith wrote, “so even a below-average winter in the Wasatch is often a deeper winter compared to many other regions.”