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Looking ahead to next winter in the northern hemisphere, NOAA climate forecasters report low probabilities for La Nina conditions developing in the later half of 2012 and about equal probabilities for neutral or El Nino conditions.

See: http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/enso_advisory/ensodisc.html

About Alps the neutral condition of ENSO are good because it allows a regular and constant flow of Atlantic perturbed with heavy snow.
By NINA there are too many conflicts, it goes from very cold to very hot and the snow falls only in parts exposed (last winter)
When there is NINO strong the snow comes, but in a more autumn and winter. There are exceptions such as the year extraordinary 08/09

Nice, been thinking about this lately. Best news we've seen for a couple years. I'm stockpiling my leave time already. My fingers are crossed, it's not even July yet.

Mighty dry out there, dusty trails.

I've been watching the ENSO forecasts closely as well. I'm guessing Flagstaff gets the same ENSO effects as here in NNM. This year we got lucky, La Nina let us off the hook with storms tracking further south than normal. Taos Ski Valley was all cocky about it, advertising discounts to folks with passes from CO resorts. What I don't understand is why Tahoe and the PNW had such a dry season this year. I thought La Nina favored them.
The good news for me is that I'm close enough to the San Juans that I can find snow up there no matter the ENSO conditions.

el nino would favor tahoe and south...la nina dumps on PNW and it did...we were above average for sure, there is still 100+ inches on the ground at 6,000 ft.

Actually, Tahoe sits right in the middle, so either situation could have an effect on weather here. Tahoe's all time biggest and smallest snow years were La Nina years, and there have also been big and small El Nino years. Fortunately, even in one of the weakest winters ever in Tahoe, there was still pow to be had.

Yeah, what this means for any particular place in any particular season is a can of worms; broad trends are often riddled with lots of variability. Here's a study that delves into how regional precipitation trends and variability relate (or don't relate) to different phases: http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/WAF983.1

Thanks, interesting read. I've only been here 3 years but I was surprised by the variation in the southwest (supposedly Nino wet/ Nina dry). I'm told 2009-10, El Nino, was the best season in a decade, then 2010-11 was a horrible La Nina year with something like half of average snowfall. Then this season was La Nina as well and we were right on average.