Is Mud Season Really Over?

If you’re a regular — or even an occasional — visitor to our Jeffco Open Space Parks, you’ll know about the mud season routine. Walk through, not around the mud.

We’ve had a fabulous spring this year, the mud was intense for a while, but now that the daily rains have slackened off, is mud season really over?

I doubt it.

My reasoning follows the upcoming shift from La Niña to El Niño, which is happening now. So why would this natural climate pattern change impact the mud season in the Colorado high country?

First, a little backstory. La Niña and El Niño are conditions that develop in the eastern tropical Pacific Ocean, and in so doing, impact the weather patterns across the Pacific Basin and North America.

When the eastern Pacific gets cooler than “normal”, it pushes the Jet Stream – those massive rivers of air that undulate around the globe at the intersection of our atmosphere (the Troposphere) and the Stratosphere – northward. The impact of this movement often causes the southern and interior sections of Alaska, and the lands from the Pacific Northwest to New England, to be cooler and wetter than average. The southern section of the US, from California to the Carolinas, tends to be warmer and dryer than average. This is a La Niña event.

When the eastern Pacific gets warmer than “normal”, the Jet Stream pushes south, allowing this cooler and wetter weather pattern to drop over the mid-continent, and even into the deep South. This is a typical El Niño event.

These two opposite weather patterns are not a certainty, but they are a probability, and the probability that they will manifest is based on how much warmer or cooler than “normal” the waters of the eastern Pacific become.

This year, it’s looking like there’s a very good chance that El Niño will settle in by summer and extend through the fall and winter of 2023-2024. Typically, an El Niño year portends a wetter summer, fall, winter, and spring. Long-range weather forecasting is a challenge, so let’s say that this El Niño year will be “typical”.

Hence the possibility that the mud season is not over, not yet.

So remember, when you encounter mud on the trails, walk through the mud, not around. Stay on trail, no matter what. And if the trail is not to your liking, retrace your steps and try another trail.