When the Pacific Ocean runs cold, the snow rarely falls in faraway Colorado. For the past three out of four winters, the weather pattern known as La Niña has dominated the Colorado region, resulting in lower snowfall in the high mountains of Central Colorado. But this cool phase of the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) has now run its course, and while this means we are currently in a neutral stage of the cycle, a strong El Niño warming is predicted in the Pacific. On Thursday, April 9, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that water temperatures in the Pacific Ocean near the equator had returned to the long-term average, but noted that warming along the California coast was likely to result in above-average…