Fall Flurries Prompt CA Ski Resorts To Announce 2023 Opening Dates

LOS ANGELES, CA — Less than two months after Mammoth Mountain's epic snow season ended, the highest ski resort in California was dusted with four inches of snow this week.

The early autumn storm followed a ski season of record snowfall — more than 900 inches in Mammoth — and it bolsters hope that the upcoming ski season could be another epic one thanks to a powerful El Niño forecast through the winter.

Lake Tahoe resorts have also been reporting sporadic snow flurries as well, Palisades Tahoe tweeted.

Following the surprise snowfall this week, ski resorts across the state released estimated season opening dates, according to the Reno Gazette-Journal. They include:

• Mt Rose Ski Tahoe: Nov. 9
• Mammoth Mountain: Nov. 10
• Boreal Mountain, Heavenly Mountain Resort,
• Northstar California Resort: Nov. 17
• Palisades Tahoe: Nov. 22
• Sugar Bowl Resort: Nov. 24
• Kirkwood Mountain Resort: Dec. 1
• Sierra at Tahoe: Dec. 2
• Diamond Peak: Dec. 7

In Southern California, many are anticipating opening dates on par with the 2022-23 season which started slow but lasted through April. Industry sites such as onthesnow.com are estimating mid-to-late November openings for Mt. Baldy, Snow Summit, Bear Mountain and Mountain High.

The last two times overall ocean temperatures remained as elevated as they have been of late, El Niño brought powerful snow storms to Southern California's mountains.

According to the experts, El Niño now has a 95 percent chance of sticking around through the early months of 2024, and it's likely to remain strong. The Climate Prediction Center now says there is a 71 percent chance that El Niño will be strong. Strong El Niño weather patterns tend to correlate with unusually wet winter seasons across much of California. The El Niño pattern typically reaches peak strength between November and January before ending in March.

"The global climate models we rely on are pretty certain that the currently observed warmer-than-average sea surface temperatures will last and even strengthen through winter 2023–24," according to the weather service's blog. "The continued model confidence is one reason why forecasters have odds of over 70% that the current event will peak as a “strong” El Niño for the November-January average. There is even a 30% chance that Niño-3.4 values exceed 2.0˚C by this winter, which would put ocean temperatures in a tier with some of the strongest El Niños since 1950."

The last two El Niño summer conditions on par with this year occurred just prior to two winters with major storms including 1997 and 2015, according to the weather service.

"Remember those events? Pretty big El Niños," the weather service concluded.