“La Niña is on its way out—it’s expected to dissipate in the near term and return to neutral conditions through late spring. NOAA hasn’t yet updated their [southern oscillation] information this month, but I imagine that will happen any day now.” ”

Russ Schumacher - Colorado’s State Climatologist

PEAK TO PEAK — Not many people get boos when they give their graduating high school class’s valedictorian speech. But I nailed it. It was May 1979, Jeffco Stadium, at Arvada Senior High. Instead of spouting empty platitudes, I said that it would be up to our generation to tackle big oncoming problems head-on. I specifically said that we would need to find ways to get off our addiction to fossil fuel and get our society converted to other energy sources.

Boo! Boo! Not a lot, but there was no mistaking the reaction.

The funny thing was, I’d avoided saying what I really wanted to say. Because doing so would have required a seminar and I only had ten minutes. All I could get into that the audience could grasp in the wake of the traumatic 1973-74 oil embargo and economic crash, was that depending on fossil fuel was dangerous for our society.

My real concern, then and now, was that rapidly-increasing carbon dioxide would swiftly, catastrophically heat our planet. And that if we didn’t ramp down on fossil fuels, we were going to end up in big trouble.

As often happens, the trouble had started with reading a book. It was Weather, 1969, by Phil Thompson (NCAR) and Bob O’Brien (San Francisco Chronicle). I pored through it when I was twelve. Page 178: “Combustion engines are sending 12 billion tons of carbon dioxide a year into the earth’s atmosphere. In 50 years, this rate may quadruple, and by trapping more heat may raise the earth’s average temperature by 1 or 2 degrees F. That might, over an extended period, melt the Greenland icecap and Antarctica’s ice, raise oceans by 170 feet, swamp every seacoast, and push the shores of the Gulf of Mexico north to Memphis, Tennessee.”

Looking back, I wish my past-self had been wrong on that day in 1979, as he waved his arms to his bewildered, future-facing audience. Here in 2026, we haven’t liquified our ice sheets yet, but we’re well on our way. Weather was, unfortunately, spot-on.

This winter, we’re seeing our climate’s future here in the Peak to Peak. We’re rivalling 1976-77, Colorado’s Winter of No Snow (which was fresh in my memory in 1979). We’re in a severe drought, shown in the graph that I’ve gotten NOAA to plot for today’s column. These kinds of droughts can be driven by conditions in the Pacific off Ecuador. El Niño brings warmer sea surface temperatures and (for us) warmer, wetter winters. Opposite La Niña conditions, which we’ve been in this winter, bring northern Colorado’s mountains warmth and drought.

The Southern Oscillation might date back to at least the Pliocene-Pleistocene. But increasing CO2 is making these historic oscillations more severe and prolonged due to a more energetic atmosphere. If you’re concerned, fasten your seatbelt, because we’re sliding the Gaussian probability curve sideways toward these kinds of winters happening more frequently and with greater severity, becoming more common and more extreme while we pump CO2 into our skies.

I’ve reached out to Colorado’s State Climatologist and professor of atmospheric science at CSU, Russ Schumacher, asking about La Niña and our drought outlook. He notes that this winter’s La Niña has put Colorado under an extraordinarily larger-than-normal zone of persistent high pressure and dryness. “La Niña is on its way out—it’s expected to dissipate in the near term and return to neutral conditions through late spring. NOAA hasn’t yet updated their [southern oscillation] information this month, but I imagine that will happen any day now.” 

Schumacher adds, “The question then is whether the active pattern will stick around in March and April, and it’s still too early to say. On average, March and April bring a lot of snow to the mountains, and we need a lot more than average to make up for the big deficits that are in place now. But if we can get to a 'below-average' snowpack with an active spring, that would still be a lot better than the historically bad conditions we’re looking at now.”

Stay tuned; our CO2 clock is ticking. Personally, I can’t wait to invest in a low-altitude ski area.

The author takes climate questions at: Peak2PeakClimate@gmail.com.