Rocky Mountain ski areas closed in March. Snowmaking operations ran in the Mid-Atlantic in April. And then, after an all-but-dormant winter out West, feet of snow arrived in the Sierra after most California resorts had already called it quits.
The 2025-26 winter saw extreme weather, with the eastern half experiencing consistent cold and heavy snowfall, while the western half endured record warmth and a lack of snowfall.
Nordic Valley near Eden, Utah, shut down indefinitely last Wednesday due to rain and dwindling snowpack, but has now announced plans to reopen this coming weekend after a multi-day snowstorm will slam the Beehive State. The resort that normally boasts 300+ inches of the Greatest Snow on Earth annually has so far only received 15 inches. Nordic Valley is located just half an hour east of Ogden in the northern Wasatch Mountains.
"The numbers are really, really bad," Swain says. "If this were November, they might be less meaningful. We're not in November-we're heading toward mid-February. The normal numbers are pretty high. To be at half of them means that, in absolute terms, the deficit is large."
January 2026 favors a classic weak La Niña setup: colder, stormier conditions and better snow odds for the Pacific Northwest, Northern Rockies, Great Lakes, and western Alaska, with more warmth and dryness across the Southwest, southern Rockies, southern Plains, Southeast, and southern Appalachians. The central Rockies, much of California, the Northwest coast, and New England sit in a higher-uncertainty "wild card" zone where small shifts in the storm track could swing snowfall either way.
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