"This is a report that is entirely anecdotal, and probably 100% coincidental, besides. However, it's an observation borne of living in the same place for 15 years, so maybe if stirred into the pot with some real data it might mean something.
The winter in Utah (central intermountain west) was dominated by zonal weather patterns coming more or less from the direct west (San Francisco's left-over storms) rather than the gulf of Alaska/ pacific NW northwesterly flows. This has resulted in a much warmer than usual winter, with rain in the valleys, and snow of much higher density than usual (8-10% vs 5-8%)-- for the most part. The winter was also characterized by split flows, with the bulk of moisture frequently going south of the mountains of N. Utah and higher snowfalls in the central and southern part of the state.
It seems like the weather pattern has shifted for the spring, though. We are now getting more NW flows. NW flows typically hit the Salt Lake valley after passing over the Great Salt Lake. Because it has been such a warm winter, the lake is warmer than is usual for this time of year. This is resulting in significant lake effect snows in the Wasatch mountains just east of Salt Lake City (orographic uplift of the now-supersaturated air results in heavy accumulations on the eastern side of the range).
Here's the conjectural part: in 1983, which was the last big El Nino year, the weather pattern was very similar, with a fairly unremarkable early season winter, and a spring that just wouldn't quit being winter. In that year, we had cooler temperatures and significant and frequent snowfalls in the mountains (cold and rainy in the valleys) up until the last week of May (I remember skiing in 2 ft of new snow on May 13). The kicker that year was that the temperatures suddenly warmed from low 40's in the mountains to mid-60's the last week of May, resulting in floods when the entire season's snowpack melted in the span of 3-4 weeks rather than 6-8 weeks. It will be interesting to see what spring of 1998 is like here..."--Christine Cline <kokopellis@att.net>