East coast snow records-- El Nino or Global Warming

I saw a story on MSNBC that was trying to make the case that the snowfall this year in the east is caused by global warming. It was simply a matter of time before somebody tried to make this argument. They argued that a warmer world is a wetter world (this is surprisingly true) and therefore, when it is cold, there will be more moisture and thus more snowfall. Huh, sounds preposterous, but even if we assume there is more moisture, we can't assume the temperatures will be cold enough to turn that moisture into snow. This is especially true in the face of another, much more obvious option. See, I thought it was from El Nino. El Nino has long been known to cause greater amounts of moisture and colder temperatures in the eastern and southeast United States, I guess MSNBC didn't get that memo.

Nonetheless, it doesn't snow like that in DC very often, so what gives? Could it be global warming or is it El Nino. Well, is this an El Nino year or even close to an El Nino year? Yes, in fact, we are in an El Nino year. Sorry MSNBC. However, to prove this out, lets take a closer look at the snowiest years on record for the DC area. The top 7 snow years in DC history are: 2009-10, 54.9 inches; 1898-99, 54.4; 1995-96, 46.0; 1921-22, 42.5; 1891-92, 41.7; 1904-05, 41.0; and 1957-58, 40.4. So, El Nino years should match up or at least come close to the snowy years for my theory to hold up. El Ninos don't last an exact period of time and they cycle in and out about once every 3-7 years, so a big snow year in a known El Nino year would be spot on, but a big snow year within a year of the known El Nino event to me seems possibly related. It is certainly correlative. So, do El Nino events coincide with these big snow seasons? We already know that there was an El Nino starting in 2009-10 so check. In addition, the strongest El Nino ever recorded occurred in 1997-98 and that is certainly within a years time span of the event. Also, the 1957-58 year was an El Nino year, so that coincides nicely. Another check. I don't know about El Ninos in the 19th century because I could only find dates for El Ninos in the 20th. So, that leaves two more. The closest El Nino years to those are 1905-06 and 1923-24. Both of those, like 1997-98, occurred in the year following the big heavy snows in DC. Hmm... it seems that every time DC has a bunch of snow, it can be closely correlated to an El Nino event. In addition, 5 of the 7 greatest snowfalls in DC have happened before any claims of warming could be made. So, if the world is warming and producing more moisture and thus making more snow in winter, you'd expect to see these kinds of events more often, right? Instead, the only 2 events of this nature happen to correlate with El Nino events. So much for global warming being the cause of this.