Words: James Herring
Look, we’re not going to yank your leg and try to bullshit our way through a preseason snow forecast. Much of the technical jargon regarding predicting weather goes in one ear and out the other for us.
So we took the key significant seasonal outlooks that have been released over the past couple weeks, which are kind of on the ball, but not and broke it down into a gold fish sized article to skill you up for the next “what’s the season looking like” conversation. Please note that these key forecasts are also written by insects and amphibious creatures like grasshoppers and frogs. So you know they’re legit.
Here’s what we took away from the insect/amphibious forecast:
The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD) are the main climate drivers used to forecast seasonal snowfall. Both are expected to stay neutral this winter… Have we lost you?
Basically, what that means is that we are in the middle of La Niña (bloody rain) and El Niño (bloody scorching), so we can expect average types of temperatures and snowfall.
The IOD is neutral to negative, meaning we’ll have a dryer start to the season, but it’ll switch to a wetter than average end of winter.
This could go either way really, if we can get some solid cold snaps on the tail end of the season, we could see some late winter dumps setting us up for a great spring season.
The Froggy one gave us a few key takeaways for the start of the season:
- May to July rainfall likely to be below average for parts of southeast Australia
- Maximum temperatures for May to July are likely to be warmer than average Australia wide.
- Minimum temperatures for May to July are likely to be warmer than average for almost all Australia except the inland southeast.
Both of our oddly nicknamed meteorologist’s came back with the same consensus about our upcoming season, and that is (drum roll for effect)… Average, we can expect an average season.
And honestly, a season of average snowfall would still be so rad after last year’s shit show of a winter.
We think things are shaping up for a pretty good season, and I’m the first to admit, I’m that idiot every year saying, “we’re going to have an all-time season this year”. But this season already has a different feel to it.
Mt Buller has been stockpiling snow made from their SnowFactory and has now got Bourke Street already looking shreadable… in May! And the first snowboarding event is about 2 weeks away, with the Corin Forest Rail Jam kicking off just south of Canberra.
All in all, we know this season is going to be a shit ton better than the last. I mean, our Victorian comrades actually get to go ride at their local mountains this year after last season was shut down. That already improves the season 10-fold.
Both the Frog and the Grasshopper basically said it would be an average at best season. We personally think it will be average at worst (and I am basing that solely off a gut feeling). But after many of us haven’t done as much riding as we would typically like to, or many of the things we love to do in general, average at best sounds fucking dope.
…Maybe don’t sell your house though.
