Abstract: There is steady and thick snow cover in Tianshan Mountains and its north area (northern Xinjiang) in the cold winter. Snowfall has important impacts on crop surviving the winter, livestock feeding and drinking, traffic and transfer, ice snow resources replenishment. With economic development, the impacts of winter precipitation anomalies become more and more important. To further understand the mechanism of winter precipitation anomalies, the inter seasonal characteristics of circulations, water vapor (WV) transfer, income and expenses of WV are analyzed. Using daily rainfall data of 38 stations in northern Xinjiang and NCEP/NCAR daily reanalysis dataset from 1960 to 2004, the characteristics of circulation, WV transfer, income and expenses of WV for November, December and January precipitation anomalies in northern Xinjiang are investigated, as well as contributions from circulations and WV anomalies respectively on the whole WV transfer anomalies. The results show that Scandinavian (SCA) pattern plays a leading role on monthly precipitation anomalies in winter of Xinjiang. WV transfer quantity (WVTQ) is the largest in November, and smallest in January. West and east boundaries are charged with the dominating importing and exporting borderline of WV respectively for every level, and net WV earning quantity presents an obvious increasing trend every month. During the months with abundant precipitation, more WVTQ along westerly over middle Asia comes from Arctic Ocean, Siberia and Arab Sea respectively rather than from regions of Mediterranean Sea and Caspian Sea. WVTQ along westerly of east to Caspian Sea reveals weakening in less precipitation months. For winter precipitation prediction, the east west oscillations of the upper level jet stream over north Atlantic and the corresponding the baroclinic eddies resulting in SCA pattern activity is very important, and WV transfer anomalies coming from Arctic Ocean, Siberia and Arab Sea areas should also be highly concerned.