It was a Tuesday in mid-July and I was pulling together an early-buy pass campaign brief when a second tab loaded: NOAA’s latest ENSO outlook. El Niño at 96% probability by December. I stopped what I was doing and read the full forecast.
That number changes things. And almost nobody on a resort marketing team is acting on it yet.
What NOAA actually says
By June 2026, NOAA’s Climate Prediction Center upgraded El Niño’s probability to 96% by December — up from 82% in May and 61% in April. The equatorial Pacific has been warming for months. The atmospheric response is underway. This isn’t a hedged forecast. It’s as close to a certainty as seasonal climate science gets.
The pattern it signals is the classic El Niño north-south split, and it’s worth knowing cold before your next campaign brief.
Colorado and the Southern Rockies look good. The December–February precipitation outlook shows above-normal precipitation probability for the central Rockies. High-elevation resorts benefit most — El Niño tends to deliver moisture before blower powder, which means a deep, dense base at elevation with quality improving on the cold back half of storms. Telluride, Wolf Creek, and Taos sit squarely in the favorable zone.
The Pacific Northwest and Northern Rockies are in for a rough one. Montana, Idaho, and much of Oregon and Washington face below-normal precipitation and above-normal temperatures through core winter. Big Sky, Whitefish, and Sun Valley are looking at a slow start and suppressed early-season snowpack. Wyoming sits slightly better than its northern neighbors but still inside the warm-temperature signal.
Utah and the Northeast are mixed. Utah gets “equal chances” on precipitation — technically neutral — but above-normal temperatures raise snow levels and increase rain-on-snow risk below 9,000 feet. The Northeast runs warm but isn’t precipitation-suppressed; manageable at elevation, harder at lower-elevation resorts.
Why July matters more than December
Most resort marketing teams will wait until opening day to think about any of this. That’s a miss.
The early-buy window opens in October for most mountains. If you want to capture pass buyers who are already thinking about where to ski next winter, you need your messaging in place by September — which means your geographic segmentation needs to be built right now.
Here’s the play I’d run for a Colorado resort: pull your lapsed-guest list from the past two seasons. Filter by home state. Identify skiers from Montana, Idaho, Oregon, and Washington — regions that benefited from La Niña the last two winters and now face the opposite pattern. These guests have discretionary ski budgets and a reason to look south.
Build a targeted email around the forecast. Not breathless. Not hype. Just honest: “The science says this winter is shaping up differently across different regions. Here’s why that matters if you haven’t picked a mountain yet.” Drop it in early September before competitors do.
The flip side for northern resorts
If your resort is in the PNW or Northern Rockies, the worst move is pretending the forecast doesn’t exist. Your savvy guests already know. NOAA’s outlooks get shared widely in ski communities, and the conversation is already happening on forums and subreddits.
The better move: lead with your snowmaking investment story. If you added guns this summer — and at least four major snowmaking investments were announced in the first two weeks of July alone — that’s your headline. “We don’t wait on weather” lands harder when the weather forecast is uncertain. Your snowmaking infrastructure is exactly the kind of concrete, credible story that converts fence-sitters in an El Niño year.
The resorts that win early-buy season aren’t the ones with the best subject lines. They’re the ones who act on public information before everyone else figures out it matters. In ski terms, first chair beats the best line you’ll ever write — and right now, first chair is open.
What’s your resort’s early-buy strategy looking like? I’m curious whether any of you are already factoring the forecast into targeting — or if July still feels too early to be thinking about November.
