NOAA says El Niño 2026 is expected to stay strong through this winter and could reach “super” status by October, when ski slopes in the United States are set to open. Waters in the equatorial eastern and central Pacific Ocean could run as much as 2 degrees Celsius above average by September, with temperatures still several tenths of a degree warmer by October.
The setup matters because a stronger El Niño often shifts winter weather across the United States, leaving much of the South wetter than average and much of the northern United States warmer. Skiers and winter travelers are watching that split closely.
September and October
El Niño is a periodic warming of the equatorial eastern and central Pacific Ocean, and its strongest influence usually comes in late fall or winter. NOAA Coral Reef Watch showed sea surface temperature anomalies across the Pacific and Atlantic oceans on June 21, 2026, while the ocean pattern has continued to build toward the threshold that marks super El Niño status.
That threshold is what puts the September and October readings at the center of the story. If waters reach the projected level by September and then stay several tenths of a degree warmer by October, the Pacific signal would be strong enough to match the super El Niño label used in forecasting.
The Weather Channel snowfall data
The Weather Channel examined snowfall data starting in 1950 for about four dozen U.S. locations with enough records and snowfall that typically falls at least once a year. Across those locations, there were 26 El Niño seasons, 25 La Niña seasons and 22 neutral seasons over a 73-year period.
That record helps explain why forecasters are cautious about treating any one El Niño as a simple template. The most recent El Niño in the 2023-2024 winter brought a lack of winter-like temperatures across most of the Northern Tier, and eight states from North Dakota to New Hampshire saw their warmest winter on record.
Green and White mountains
Frequent thaws and rainfall kept the Green and White mountains less snowy than usual in the 2023-2024 winter, while the Midwest ended up with less snow after a warm winter and mixed precipitation. Most of the South had little, if any, snow, even though a classic El Niño winter tends to be wetter than average through much of the southern United States, from parts of California to the Carolinas.
That mismatch is the complication for this winter’s outlook. A strong El Niño is going to be in place through this winter, but the last strong one did not deliver the clean southern rain-and-northern-snow pattern that many skiers, travelers and forecasters expected.
For readers planning around that forecast, the next checkpoint is whether the September warming reaches the projected 2 degrees Celsius above average and whether October stays warm enough to keep the pattern in super territory. If it does, the southern United States could stay relatively wetter while the northern United States stays milder, but the 2023-2024 winter showed that El Niño does not always follow its textbook script.
