SACRAMENTO—For much of northern and central California, the El Nino-powered arrival of winter could be more of a gradual onset than a grand entrance.
After several weak storms have spritzed the region in the final days of October, another cool and potentially wet system is due to hit California in the middle of next week, forecasters say.
But it may be mid-November before a change in weather patterns really takes hold. AccuWeather’s long-range forecast shows mostly cloudy days with some showers and thunderstorms in Northern California through the second half of the month.
“This is the transition to our wet pattern,” said Michelle Mead, a National Weather Service warning coordinator in Sacramento. “This is about the time we start to see more storms moving off the Pacific (Ocean) into California.”
El Nino signaled its presence late last week with Hurricane Patricia, which slammed into Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, and was still bringing torrential rains, strong winds and local flooding to much of the southern United States this week.
Forecasters have predicted southern and central California could see above-average rainfall this winter from El Nino’s southern storms, and Northern California could start to see above-average precipitation as the winter proceeds.
However, the federal Climate Prediction Center foresees equal chances of above- or below-average rainfall throughout California in November.
And next week’s system isn’t coming from the south but from the north. It’s what meteorologists call an “inside slider” expected to make its way down from the intermountain region of Idaho and Montana, bringing the possibility of the season’s first significant snowfall at higher elevations.
Mead cautions that weather in the spring and fall is more difficult to predict, and long-range forecasts tend to rely more on what’s happened in past years than on anything that’s happening in the atmosphere.
“When we’re transitioning (from summer to winter), the models play catch-up for a while,” she said. “Every seven to 10 days they start showing us a weather system coming in, but they don’t always come to fruition.”
Source: www.capitalpress.com