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Snow Drought and El Nino This Winter

This winter, we’ve seen sur­prisingly little snow and warm­er than normal temperatures.

After last winter, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad­ministration (NOAA) declared that “from heavy snow to strong winds and mixed precipitation, the 2022-2023 winter season was one for the record books!”

Snow totals of 12 to 15 feet here in the Arrowhead put us in the top ten snowiest winters on record. But are we in a snow drought?

According to the American Meteorological Society (AMS) Glossary of Meteorology, “snow drought occurs when there is a pe­riod of abnormally low snowpack for the time of year in question.”

The 2022/23 winter was affect­ed by a La Nina climate event. With La Nina, one would ex­pect record-low temperatures as well. But the result last year was a snowier and warmer-than-average winter.

After three years of El Nina, her bigger brother, El Nino, took over our weather this past October in an unpredictable but repeating pattern.

El Nino arises from warmer than normal surface waters on the equator that flow up the cen­tral and eastern parts of the Pacific Ocean, and he hangs around for nine months or more.

Changing global wind patterns bring El Nino to our region, pro­ducing warmer winters with less snowfall.

To some extent, this warmer winter is also a result of ongoing climate change. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources (DNR) reports that “In Minnesota, a typical winter day is now sev­eral degrees warmer than in the middle of the 20th century, and average low temperatures during January, our coldest month, have increased by over 10 degrees F in some areas.”

NOAA and other agencies track the snowfall year from July 1 to June 30, so we won’t know how this season’s snowfall compares for a while. But if we set records this year, it won’t be for the most snow or the deepest cold. It’ll be the opposite.

The snowpack acts as a natu­ral reservoir, storing water from winter precipitation to supply water throughout the spring and summer. On its Facebook page at the end of January, the National Weather Service (NWS) in Du­luth published an analysis of the snowpack in its region. Looking at snow depth and snow water equivalent (the amount of water held in the snow), they conclude that the snowpack in January was less than 10% of normal.

The AMS glossary states, “Re­ductions in snowpack can nega­tively impact the recreation and tourism industries.” We won’t know what those impacts will be for several months.

According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center (NSIDC) at Colorado University, the other effect of the recent snow melt and lack of snowpack is warmer temperatures.

NSIDC states, “Because snow is highly reflective, a vast amount of sunlight that hits the snow is reflected back into space instead of warming the planet. Without snow cover, the ground absorbs about four to six times more of the sun’s energy.”

With warmer temperatures and few significant snowfalls here, it’s important to note that the lat­est measurable snowfall in Min­nesota, 1.5 inches, occurred in Koochching County on June 4, 1935.

So, there’s still hope if you’re looking for more snow.

Minnesota weather has always been unpredictable. That’s what we mean when we say, “Ahh, this is typical Minnesota weather.”

Steve Fernlund
Steve Fernlund
Columnist Steve Fernlund is a retired business owner living in Duluth. He published the Cook County News Herald in Grand Marais at the end of the last century. You may email comments or North Shore news story ideas to him at steve.fernlund@gmail.com. And see more at www.stevefernlund.com.
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