We’re going to Japan in January.
Which seemed like an excellent idea until the Pacific Ocean decided to produce what could be a monster El Niño.
Great.
I’ve already booked the flights, started plotting where we’re riding and spent far too much money for cancelling the whole thing to be an option. So when the winter forecasts started getting increasingly excited about a very strong El Niño, I obviously wanted to know what that actually means for the snow.
And there is some reason to pay attention. There is not a reason to start cancelling ski trips, though.
Those are two very different things.
How Big Is This El Niño?
Potentially very big.
El Niño conditions are already here, and NOAA currently puts the chance of this becoming a very strong El Niño above 90%.
So this isn’t one of those “Europe faces coldest winter in 100 years” stories that appears every October and is based on approximately fuck all. There is a real and fairly strong climate signal here.
The problem is what people do with that information.
In the internet echo chambers (cough, Reddit), a warmer winter in Japan suddenly means the ski season is screwed. A warmer, drier signal for the Pacific Northwest means Whistler won’t get any snow.
It doesn’t work like that.
El Niño changes the odds, sometimes quite significantly. It doesn’t tell you whether it’s going to dump two feet of snow on your first night.
Are We Screwed for Japan?
This was obviously my question.
Japan’s powder machine relies on cold air coming out of Siberia, crossing the Sea of Japan, loading itself with moisture and then hitting the mountains.
Cold Siberian air is rather important to that arrangement.
And El Niño winters in Japan have a tendency to be warmer.
S**t.
There are also early forecasts leaning towards above-average temperatures and below-average snowfall in Hokkaido this winter. That’s the bit that initially made me twitchy.
Then I remembered where we’re actually going.
Hokkaido. In January.
We’re not chasing the last scraps of snow in April.
We’re going to an island where resorts routinely measure annual snowfall in metres and January is slap bang in the middle of winter.
The problem is people read “below-average snowfall” and hear “no snow.” We’re talking about Hokkaido in January. Come on.
A crap year by Japanese standards can still involve an amount of snow that would have half the Alps furiously uploading powder videos to Instagram.
Could it be worse than usual? Absolutely. We could arrive during a warm, dry spell and get completely shafted. But that could happen anyway.
And history doesn’t make this much easier. We’ve had monster El Niños before, including 1997/98 and 2015/16, and they didn’t produce some neat, repeatable pattern you can use to predict a ski trip. Even within Hokkaido, the relationship between El Niño and snowfall varies depending on where you are.
So, Am I Cancelling?
Not a fucking chance.
And that’s not me trying to convince myself because I’ve already bought the flights. Well, maybe a tiny bit.
But mainly it’s because the risk doesn’t remotely justify changing the trip.
If we’d booked somewhere low in Honshu at the end of March, I’d be more interested in the warm-winter signal.
January in Hokkaido is about as good a hand as I can give myself this far out.
That’s enough for now.
I’ll start properly obsessing when we’re close enough for actual weather forecasts to mean something. Until then, checking a three-month snowfall anomaly map every morning isn’t going to make it snow.
I’ve tried that.
The US Is Where I'd Pay More Attention
El Niño has a much clearer relationship with winter weather across North America.
Strong El Niño winters tend to tilt things south across the US. Broadly, the southern tier gets better odds of a wetter winter, while the Pacific Northwest and northern Rockies have more reason to worry about warmth and dryness.
If I hadn’t booked anything yet, I’d use that.
Not as gospel. Just another reason to lean one way if I’m choosing between two otherwise similar trips.
What I wouldn’t do is cancel Whistler because an El Niño graphic has painted British Columbia brown.
People get weirdly binary about snow forecasts. Good El Niño region means guaranteed powder, bad El Niño region means mountain biking in February.
Neither is true. Utah could have a crappy fortnight while Whistler gets absolutely buried. You’re still dealing with weather.
And the Alps?
I basically wouldn’t care.
El Niño’s influence on European winters is much weaker and messier than it is in North America.
If you’re currently deciding whether to book Val Thorens because you’ve heard El Niño might ruin the Alps, stop. Pick somewhere sensible for the month you’re travelling, book the trip and get stoked.
There will be approximately 400 completely contradictory Alps winter forecasts published between now and December anyway.
At least one of them will later claim it was right.
Where I’ve Landed
I’m taking El Niño seriously enough to write this article. I’m not taking it seriously enough to change our trip.
If I were still choosing where to ski this winter, particularly in North America, I’d absolutely have it in the back of my mind.
For Japan, I’m happier we’re going in January than I would be early or late season.
Beyond that, fuck knows.
And I actually think that’s the most useful answer.
Nobody knows whether our two weeks in Japan will be waist-deep powder or two weeks of me angrily checking the weather app over breakfast.
We’ve picked a very snowy place at a very snowy time of year.
Now we go.
If Japan delivers, I’ll write something unbearably smug in 6-months time.
If Hokkaido has its worst January in years, I’ll eat my hat (won’t be needing it anyway).
