2006 El Niño fakes out Colorado forecasters

Here's the summary from the article which details the unusual winter we've had in Colorado so far.

An El Niño weather system arrived in the Pacific Ocean last fall, warming a stretch of water west of Peru's coast.

The last seven El Niños brought winters that were warmer and drier than usual in Colorado, with a few heavier snowstorms in the fall and spring.

This time, January was the eighth-coldest on record in Denver, and the monthly snowfall was twice the normal tally - nearly 16 inches instead of about 8, said Matt Kelsch, a meteorologist with the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

There has been measurable snow on the ground in the Front Range for 50 consecutive days, the third- longest period on record, Kelsch said.

This season's El Niño was a typical one, "moderate sized, fairly vanilla, really," Wolter said. "But the impacts have been anything but normal in this hemisphere."

Feeding the almost weekly snows in December and January was an odd constellation of forces, he said, including a warmer- than-usual western Pacific Ocean and storms that moved in from the northwest, not the southwest, as they normally do.

And for those warming skeptics:

The recent cold and snow do not mean global warming has skipped Colorado, he said.

While the background climate is warming, temperatures and precipitation will always bounce around the norm, Hoerling said.

The Longmont Times-Call chimes in:

Mike Gillespie, a snow-survey supervisor for the NRCS, said the state has had an unusual trend of large snowstorms hitting the Front Range and Eastern Plains instead of the Western Slope.

“Normally, our storm track comes into the northwest, and this year it’s been coming around the backside,” he said.