Are we finally seeing El Nino?

Are we finally seeing El Nino?

STAFF AND WIRE REPORT | Saturday, Jan 16 2010 02:53 PM

Last Updated Saturday, Jan 16 2010 09:55 PM

Bakersfield rainfall since July 1 totaled 2.17 inches on Friday, compared to a normal 2.38 inches, according to the National Weather Service. January's total was .32 inches, down from the normal-to-date of half an inch.The skies sure haven't matched predictions of a strong rain- and snow-making El Nino winter this year, but that may be about to change.

But a series of storms beginning to arrive Sunday night and continuing through Friday is forecast to bring several inches of rain and feet of snow to California, including 1/2 inch to 2 inches of rain to Bakersfield, said KBAK Channel 29 meteorologist Miles Muzio.

And the Weather Service recently updated its forecast to say we're on "the low end of a strong El Nino year," said agency meteorologist Cindy Bean.

"There are lots of indications that a pattern shift is about to occur," said John Monteverdi, a professor of meteorology at San Francisco State University.

What will happen longer-term is the focus of much talk.

"Odds are good to see some pretty good storms later in the winter," said Tim Barnett, a climate researcher at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. "How much rain, nobody can really tell you. All I can tell you is, it will be in the upper third of all the wet years."

A crucial point is that El Nino typically doesn't deliver its punch until later in the winter. So it's too early to fear a fourth drought year.

"I don't expect a whopper" of a rainy season, said Maury Roos, a hydrologist at the California Department of Water Resources. However, "I'm optimistic we will wind up getting a fairly decent January and February, probably above average."

El Nino is defined as a warming of the equatorial Pacific Ocean that's typically in place around Christmas -- hence the name, Spanish slang for "Christ child."

This warming of the Pacific typically alters weather patterns throughout the Western Hemisphere. In the United States, the Pacific Northwest usually gets drier and the Southwest wetter.

Central California, however, sits between these effects, so El Nino effects here can go either way. The Sierra Nevada snowpack -- all-important to the state's water supplies -- is also hard to predict in an El Nino winter.

Bean said we'll have to see how wet the snowpack is.

Muzio has high hopes for Mother Nature not only because of oceanic temperature anomalies but the fact many three-year droughts are punctuated by a rainy period.

"I'm completely optimistic this will be a turnaround year as far as the drought goes," Muzio said.

But what happens in Bakersfield this week and beyond is always questionable, he said, because of the rain shadow effect. Oftentimes downsloping winds warm and dry the air, robbing us of precipitation.

Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, doubts this year's El Nino will bring major rains. He said its effect is muted by another phenomenon called the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, a longer-term change that is actually trending toward cooler ocean temperatures.

A more ambitious prediction comes from Gregg Suhler, whose company, Dynamic Predictables in Columbia, Mo., developed a unique forecasting tool called ATLAS.

Unlike traditional forecasting that relies on climate observations and historical trends, ATLAS uses thermodynamic principles to tap into recurring energy cycles that drive global weather.

Simply put, Suhler said, there is a certain amount of energy in the atmosphere that has to be spent every year in the form of storms. If it isn't -- for instance, during a stretch of drought years -- that energy eventually builds up to produce very big storms on a regular cycle.

"January and February are looking to be a really wet sucker," Suhler said. "We want people to know about it."

Experts in conventional forecasting are skeptical.

"Over the last decade, we've had a lot of false alarms about El Nino," Patzert said. "As you look back in the historical record, there really haven't been that many of what I call 'macho El Ninos.' "

On the other hand, it's worth looking at the winter of 1994-95. It started out dry. Californians feared that one of the worst droughts in history -- officially recorded from 1987 to 1992 -- wasn't really over.

Then El Nino caused major floods in many areas of the state in January and March 1995, including $220 million in damage and 28 deaths. "It turned out to be a heavy year when it was done, but it was a late bloomer," Roos said.

- Matt Weiser of The Sacramento Bee and Californian government editor Christine Bedell contributed to this report.

http://www.bakersfield.com/news/local/x113240137/Are-we-finally-seeing-El-Ni-241-o