May 14th, 2026

Background

I care deeply about the weather. Environmental conditions affect everything I love to do, but they vary so wildly it can feel hard to make sense of trends. To help myself understand trends and not forget them, I keep a personal climate journal. I started it when I was 18 after a childhood in Arizona, loosely observing weather but wanting to get more organized. Every season I simply write a couple of sentences about how it felt. In the summer it's things like "hot dry June, then intense monsoons begin, lots of flooding throughout AZ and UT" or "early onset monsoon, not many intense thunderstorms but lots of cloudy drizzle days. Rarely above 75F in Flagstaff". Can you guess which of the past 11 summers those were? More often it's something like "very weak monsoon, a few big rainstorms, home generally high 80s".

There's no data in the journal, just vibes. Data are available in so many places (for now, anyway) and are cited so often. I like data, but I like feelings too. I spend enough time outside, paying attention, that how I feel about the weather maps pretty closely with how the data show it actually was. So I write down how I feel.

Winter weather is the most interesting. It's more erratic within the season, and therefor harder to distill into a one-sentence vibe. But it varies so much from year-to-year, so it feels important to try to capture it. Fall is a more stable, predictable season in the southwest, but sometimes it too plays into the story arch of a Winter-Spring cycle. I felt like that happened this year. Since the first day of Fall in 2025 my journal has had a theme: warm, warm, warm.

Climate Change Strikes the Western US

To put it simply, I have never lived through a Fall-Winter that was this warm in the western US. Nobody has - this was the warmest. I haven't lived many places for many years, but I'm also in touch enough to pick up on how the seasons feel to other people. I hear what's being said. And the data back it up:

It began with hurricanes and tropical storms. Late September brought Arizona a rain that felt like a lingering monsoon, but wasn't. Monsoons come from the Gulf, this came from the Pacific.

Then, in mid-October, Tropical Cyclone Priscilla brought the juice. Erratic, heavy rain pierced through the southwest, bringing massive floods to some areas and leaving others unwatered.

The San Juan Mountains were one area that got heavy rain. The Verde watershed was another, but not all of it. The Salt Watershed was largely untouched, except for some crushing floods of Pinto Creek in Globe, AZ. I paddled a raging brown torrent through the Verde's Wild & Scenic canyon, then paddled a wash in Sedona so ephemeral it's named Dry Creek.

This October cycle was the most unbelievable Fall rain I had ever heard of, but then it happened again! A series of atmospheric rivers in mid-November brought record precip to Arizona. Flash floods repeated themselves in many drainages, but because this storm came later our air was colder, making it just cold enough to snow at the highest elevations. It didn't feel like it from the three rainy days in town, but I was suspicious that this was the beginning of Flagstaff's ski season. I was right.

A few days of heavy precip in an entire season may not seem unique, but it is. Fall is usually the driest time of year in Arizona. When summer ends, I don't count on any backcountry skiing or runoff happening until the New Year. But with the help of my journal, I can recall two wet Falls - 2018 and 2022. Both of these led to the fantastic winters of 2019 and 2023 in Arizona, and in many parts of the west.  Stoke was building!

But, although this winter would continue to be not dry, it would miss a key ingredient: cold. Here's how 2023 compared to the graph above:

Usually it feels to me like frequent precipitation makes for a colder season, because it reduces number of sunny days. But heavy precipitation usually carries with it warm air from the ocean. If there's a state that knows this is true, it's Washington, where the juiciest storms bring the warmest temperatures and dump snow-crushing rain on the mountains. Washington experienced one it's biggest flood cycles ever in December 2025. 

I know I'm jumping around the country in a way that might not make sense, but it all feels related to me. Shortly after this cycle of atmospheric rivers struck Washington, a more Arizona-version came to Arizona. We didn't see the massive rainfall totals that we had in October and November, but the week of Christmas brought the warmest mid-winter storm I have ever heard of. It was way warmer than the November storm! For a week, it rained all the way up to the summit of the Kachina Peaks at over 12,000ft. The Verde got good flows, and I went paddling.

Any lingering soft snow from the November storm was injected with water, and then frozen solid. The entire mountain was encasulated in a layer of unskiable ice. Luckily January 10th brought 8" of powder, which on most aspects blew away in the wind. Suspicious that sheltered terrain could be rideable, I went with a group to the summit of Doyle for my second ski day of the year.

In February I visited interior Alaska, which in stark contrast of the western US, was having an extremely cold winter. Except for the Arctic, which these days seems to always be warmer than it's supposed to be:

After I got home from Alaska a small storm came through and, although we were a few days late we found that powder on the northwest aspect in Alison Clay bowl had stayed cold enought to have a great time.

As February became March, I looked back on our funky winter fondly. It was difficult to plan around, but I had now enjoyed three very good days of backcountry skiing in Arizona. That's not many, but it's not a given either; last year was so dry that there was never enough coverage to ski these slopes. I was optimistic that we would have a fun spring ski season. Then, I left for a two week Grand Canyon river trip which coincided perfectly with "the most extreme heat wave to ever hit the southwest at any time of year".

Needless to say, the snowpack in Arizona took a massive hit. I returned to the news that Snowbowl's closing day would be April 12th. I found this sad, but fascinating. Last year, a year that never developed backcountry coverage but had been much colder, Snowbowl had surprised us all by by staying open until June 1st. The resort is capable of relying heavily on snowmaking if precipitation doesn't deliver, but snowmaking is impossible without cold air.

I was really hoping to get some April skiing in on the Kachina Peaks, but everyone seemed to think it would be impossible. I let the emotions of a sad winter get in the way and for a while, I gave up. But then, April came in cold! Below-average temperatures in most of the West for the entire month shut down melt on northern aspects, and small weekly storms freshened things up. Other parts of the country (Rockies) were even colder. By the end of the month, I couldn't ignore these signs, I needed one last ski day.

I made a fun plan to hike up the summer trail to the summit and ski the northeast slopes in Abineau Canyon, then hike down to that trailhead where Joelle would pick me up after going mountain biking nearby. Luckily, I found some last-minute new-to-me partners who were eager to join! We had a great time and did two laps. It was the perfect day of spring skiing that I wanted.

Conclusion

All four of my ski days this season were great fun, but they certainly each presented unique planning challenges. In some ways, that made them more rewarding, since on each day I was surprised by the quality. Would I prefer a year like 2023 where weekly storms deliver feet of cold pow? Absolutely! But I guess we can't always get what we want.

I have said many times that I predict a future where Flagstaff itself sees no snow at all on most years. I say that because even in the current climate we are very often on the rain/snow line. Given that some level of climate change is now inevitable, I think many winter seasons in the future will look something like '25-'26. 

I believe it will always be possible to have excellent winters here because our terrain provides so many options for not only skiing but biking, climbing, paddling and more, even in the darkest days of the year. But I do think that we will transition more the a PNW-style climate (obviously with less overall precip). That means that snowfall and runoff will be more erratic throughout the winter, and planning conditions-dependent outings will require careful attention, creativity, and a flexible schedule.