Evidence mounts El Nino could ease California drought

LOS ANGELES -- Evidence is mounting that the El Nino ocean-warming phenomenon in the Pacific will spawn a rainy winter in California, potentially easing the state's punishing drought but also bringing the risk of chaotic storms like those that battered the region in the late 1990s.

In the clearest warning yet that Southern California could be due for a deluge, meteorologists said in a report last week the already strong El Nino has a 95 percent chance of lasting through the winter before weakening in the spring.

"This is as close as you're going to get to a sure thing," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, calling this El Nino "too big to fail."

"In the abstract," he said, "El Nino seems like our savior." But if floods and mudslides develop, it's "not going to look like the great wet hope charging across the landscape on a white horse."

A strong El Nino arrives about once every 20 years. Ocean temperatures show this one to be the second-strongest since such recordkeeping began in 1950, said Eric Boldt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

That would make it weaker than the El Nino of 1997-98 but stronger than the El Nino of 1982-83.

Both of those winters were known in California for relentless rain, strong winds and heavy snow.

Waves pounded the coast, mudslides rolled down mountainsides and floods swamped homes and claimed lives.

Storms blamed on El Nino in 1997-98 killed at least 17 people, wiped out strawberry and artichoke crops, pushed houses off hillside foundations and washed out highways. Damage was estimated at more than $500 million.

The 1982-83 tempests left 36 people dead, damaged or destroyed more than 7,900 homes and businesses, and caused $1.2 billion in losses, according to the weather service.

The NASA lab has been observing El Nino and other ocean trends for decades.

In 1992, JPL, in collaboration with France, launched the first in a series of satellites capable of observing the phenomena on a global basis.

Still, El Ninos can be unpredictable.

Some have produced little rain, and some of the most damaging storms have come in non-El Nino years.

In the last 65 years, there have been just six strong El Ninos and only two produced major precipitation statewide, according to the California Department of Water Resources.

Weather models this year show a 60 percent chance of above-average rainfall in Southern California, but that figure declines farther north, Boldt said.

From the San Francisco Bay Area to Sequoia National Park, there's a 50 percent chance of above-average rainfall.

From Eureka to north of Reno, Nevada, that estimate drops to 33 percent.

It's likely to be drier in the Pacific Northwest and the northern Rocky Mountains.

California public agencies have been warned to prepare for large storms. Boldt said he can't count all the meetings he's been to with emergency managers and local officials.