Will La Niña send B.C. into a winter deep freeze?

La Niña may send us cooler temperatures and more moisture, likely resulting in a great deal more snow at many ski resorts

    1 of 2 2 of 2

      Two days before Maëlle Ricker raced into Canadian sports history at the 2010 Winter Games, some Olympic fans were in an agitated state about the weather. Heavy warm rain had washed away almost a foot of snow on Cypress Mountain, capturing the attention of the world’s media.

      Vanoc announced that it had “protected sufficient contingency snow” to ensure that the events would proceed. However, in a Valentine’s Day surprise, Olympic organizers also declared that they were closing the general-admission standing-room area over the subsequent two days.

      Approximately 8,000 tickets were refunded for the men’s and ladies’ snowboard-cross events. Ricker, who grew up in West Vancouver, was scheduled to compete for the first Canadian women’s gold medal on home soil in this event.

      In a recent phone interview with the Georgia Straight, she recalled the weather conditions on the day of her historic race on February 16, 2010. “In the morning, it was very rainy and foggy,” Ricker said. “But for the finals in the afternoon, it had cleared up and it was sunny. So we had a little bit of everything.”

      The hometown hero posted the third-highest qualifying time. In the final, she blazed ahead of the pack and maintained her lead throughout the race. The weather-diminished crowd went wild, chanting her name repeatedly.

      “It was definitely challenging snow conditions,” Ricker acknowledged. “We were very lucky because they did an amazing job providing us with that course.”

      According to Doug Lundquist, a meteorologist with Environment Canada, the unusually warm weather last February was partly attributable to El Niño. It’s a periodic abnormal warming of surface water in the tropical Pacific Ocean that brings warmer air to British Columbia. “Even if we’re just normal this winter, we will be colder than last year,” Lundquist noted in a phone interview. “We will be snowier than last year.”

      However, he said it’s likely that this winter will be one to two degrees colder than average because Pacific Ocean surface waters off the South American coast have cooled considerably. The arrival of La Niña—which is the opposite to El Niño—is accompanied by changes to the jet stream, which changes the location and strength of storm tracks across North America.

      Environment Canada reports on its website that the 1995–96 La Niña current brought “the full brunt of winter” to the Pacific Coast, leaving thousands of B.C. residents without power. A storm in late November of 1995 dumped 175 millimetres of rain on the Lower Mainland in just a few days. This was followed by bitterly cold temperatures in January 1996.

      Lundquist pointed out that La Niña could play a role in more cold air and precipitation coming to B.C., possibly as soon as December. This would be great news for skiers and snowboarders in many areas of the province. “If we have cooler-than-normal temperatures and also more moisture, it usually means more snow, particularly in the mountains,” he said. “For any ski hill that is in the wet belt, that is good news. I got my season’s pass for cross-country skiing this year without thinking twice.”

      There’s already enthusiasm in the skiing and snowboarding community about what’s in store for this winter. The president of Tourism Sun Peaks, Christopher Nicolson, told the Straight by phone that La Niña was on many people’s minds at ski shows in Vancouver and Seattle last month. “Quite literally, at a ski-show booth every second person that I spoke to referenced La Niña and referenced a high level of optimism for a fantastic snow year,” Nicolson declared.

      He emphasized that a large dump of the white stuff eclipses anything else when it comes to luring people to his resort, which is near Kamloops. “If there is snow on the Coquihalla and there is snow on the North Shore mountains, the phones ring at a higher pitch than with any other kind of marketing program we can do,” Nicolson maintained. “That has been proven year in, year out—as long as we’ve existed. La Niña has increased the anticipation.”

      Over at the Mount Washington Alpine Resort in the Comox Valley, there’s a similar level of enthusiasm about La Niña, according to public-relations director Brent Curtain. “The last time we had a La Niña proper, like the one that’s being forecast for this year, was the ’98–’99 winter season,” he told the Straight by phone. “We received the deepest snow we’ve ever had on record: 18.5 metres of snow that winter. And the settled snow base at its deepest point was 9.5 metres.”

      Curtain contrasted that with an average over the past 15 years of 11.5 metres of snow per season at Mount Washington. He said that preseason sales of discounted tickets in six-packs have been going extremely well. “We haven’t been able to ascertain if it’s directly related to La Niña,” he conceded. “Let’s just say the hype is definitely there. People are hearing about it.”

      Ricker is among those who are aware of the phenomenon. “I have heard the rumours that it’s a La Niña year, and there is supposed to be a lot more precip than usual,” Ricker said. “Hopefully, the precip is cold enough to create snow in the mountains.”

      It is even having an effect at the retail level. Murray Fraser owns three Boardroom stores in Kitsilano and North Vancouver. In a recent phone interview, he told the Straight that all of his managers have told him that customers are talking about La Niña. He also reported that there has been an increase in the sale of hard goods—such as boots, boards, and bindings—in anticipation of a great winter season.

      Fraser contrasted that with a downturn in business last year because of the Olympics, the closure of the Sea to Sky Highway, and the lack of snow. “People didn’t get as much personal on-hill time last year and are jumping back on the bandwagon,” he claimed.

      Lundquist suggested that the effects of La Niña may not be as extreme in “dry belts”, such as the south and central Okanagan and the Thompson areas. In addition, he noted, if the storm track moves farther north than expected, this could result in warmer-than-expected air over southern B.C. “Not every La Niña or El Niño is the same,” Lundquist commented.

      Michael Ballingall, senior vice president of Big White Ski Resort south of Kelowna, told the Straight by phone that even though many in his industry are talking about La Niña, it isn’t as big a deal in his area of the province. That’s because there’s always lots of snow. “We average 24 feet,” he said. “In a La Niña year, we’ll get 28 or 29 feet.”

      He suggested that a more important factor for his resort and its sister facility, Silver Star Mountain Resort near Vernon, is easy access by air. Thanks to Air Canada’s decision to introduce a flight from Sydney, Australia, to Vancouver with a connector to Kelowna, he said: “You can literally fly and ski the same day out of Australia at our two resorts in the Interior.”

      The director of the UCLA Institute of the Environment, geographer Glen MacDonald, is a leading authority on climate change and water scarcity. In a phone interview with the Straight, he said that the El Niño–Southern Oscillation system in the Pacific Ocean generally lasts for six to 18 months. But MacDonald added that there are also long-term fluctuating trends in precipitation data. He discovered this after studying tree-ring records going back over centuries in the Bow River and South Saskatchewan River systems.

      “The only logical explanation for those were sea-surface temperatures,” MacDonald said. “When you have anomalies in the sea surface”¦it changes the storm track. And there are parts of the continent that are going to get more precipitation and parts that will get less precipitation.”

      The Colorado River Basin has experienced a dramatic reduction in water levels because of a decade-long drought. MacDonald said that Lake Mead, the largest reservoir in the United States, has fallen about 39 metres since January 2000.

      “Right now, it’s less than three metres above the level that would be a Level 1 water-shortage declaration, which has never happened before in history,” he noted.

      La Niña could exacerbate the drought in the U.S. Southwest, whereas it’s likely to lead to a sharp increase in moisture this winter in B.C., according to MacDonald. “I think there is a chance of a 40-percent-above-normal precipitation,” he suggested.

      One of MacDonald’s UCLA colleagues, geographer Laurence C. Smith, told the Straight by phone that continents in the northern hemisphere get colder the farther east you go. “If you look at prevailing wind directions, they’re generally from west to east,” Smith said. “The oceans have a modulating effect. They’re relatively warm compared to continental land masses.”

      In his recent book, The World in 2050: Four Forces Shaping Civilization’s Northern Future, Smith cites MacDonald’s research in noting that two “perfect droughts” lasting five to seven decades could have occurred in the American Southwest in the Middle Ages. “Not only did the medieval climate warming increase the drying of soils directly,” Smith writes, “it may also have altered an important circulation pattern in the Pacific Ocean, by shifting relatively cool water masses off the western coast of North America for many decades at a time (this would be a prolonged negative phase of the so-called ”˜Pacific Decadal Oscillation,’ an El Niño–like oscillation in the northern Pacific that currently vacillates over a 20-30-year time scale).”

      This raises question of whether or not above-average precipitation could continue in B.C. well into the future. And, if so, does that mean ski resorts at higher elevations could look forward to more snow, even as the province gets hotter because of climate change?

      MacDonald told the Straight that it’s difficult to predict what’s going to happen to the El Niño–La Niña system in the 21st century. “It seems that sea-surface temperatures in the Pacific and in the Atlantic have long-term variations,” he said. “We still don’t understand what are the drivers, what triggers them.”

      On a lighter note, MacDonald noted that in the winter, Canadians often lust after the clear blue skies and sunshine of the U.S. Southwest. However, during summer, when U.S. reservoir levels fall, he claimed that Americans look enviously at all that water in Canada. “Don’t squander it and don’t waste it,” he advised. “It’s an increasingly precious commodity.”

      Comments

      10 Comments

      boyforpele

      Nov 10, 2010 at 10:47am

      Lots of snow is good for the ski hills but disaster for anyone working in the travel industry. Remember December 2008? People spent days stranded at airports across the country. Let's hope people learned their lesson and won't try to fly anywhere at Christmas.
      As someone who works in the airline industry, we dread the Christmas season every year praying we won't be subjected to the wrath of winter, but worse, the wrath of ignorant people who scream at you when a plane is buried in snow. If you need to get there that badly, try driving....and good luck with that.

      chirpy

      Nov 10, 2010 at 12:28pm

      To be truthful the disaster that happened during the 2009 Christmas holidays returning flight from Europe through B.A. was a joke. We (passengers) have been stranded for a week due to the snow, that was the excuse, while other flights of different companies were taking off with no problems - the planes were not buried in snow.

      build bike lanes

      Nov 10, 2010 at 6:09pm

      I believe if we build bike lanes to all locations the air- line industry would collapse. Biking the family across the country in snow with luggage, sounds like a great adventure to me.

      Like A Snow Snake

      Nov 10, 2010 at 7:42pm

      "I believe if we build bike lanes to all locations the air- line industry would collapse. Biking the family across the country in snow with luggage, sounds like a great adventure to me."

      Oh right, that's going to be an interesting conundrum. How do you snowplow a bike lane? When they plow the regular lanes there's going to be a high incidence of snow in the bike lane. As usual, the city hasn't thought this stuff through.

      Jeremy

      Nov 10, 2010 at 7:43pm

      Either way, I'm going to give my driveway/street hypertension at the first sight of snowflakes. More salt than a double down.

      Let the stockpiling begin!

      A-man

      Nov 11, 2010 at 2:31pm

      Water, the most important commodity now, more than ever...let's not allow our gov'ts to sell it south or anywhere! At least not anymore of it anyway...

      now you tell me

      Nov 11, 2010 at 11:09pm

      I showed up here in the spring of 1995 from Australia and heard that it rained a lot so when it poured my first winter, I just took in stride. Thinking back, 1995 and 1996 were probably a bit unusal. The cold was the worst ... in 1996.

      average rape ape

      Nov 15, 2010 at 10:36am

      I might stay at home in my nice toasty compact and get la nodnod.

      COLD IN VANCOUVER

      Nov 23, 2010 at 11:48am

      TEMPERATURE -10 C WIND CHILL -17 C

      Are we ready for Decembers La Ninia? The real change will be in December through January.

      Vince C

      Dec 15, 2010 at 12:33am

      Love the bike lane comment. Why is our retarded mayor in Vancouver still here? He took up our car lanes to provide bike lanes to a tiny percentage of vancouverites that actually use them - and most people don't ride them in the rain, in the winter, at night, etc..... I see traffic on the viaducts all the time now and barely anyone in the bike lanes. All at the cost of taxpayers........