Milder winter may lie ahead for Northwest

Published 10:45 pm Friday, October 8, 2010

EVERETT — El Nino is here, but it’s still unclear what’s ahead for local weather.

Spanish for “the little boy,” the El Nino climate phenomenon generally brings warmer winter temperatures and less precipitation to the Pacific Northwest.

That doesn’t necessarily mean the county’s rivers won’t flood and Stevens Pass skiers won’t have powder. Warmer and drier is just the basic outlook for the next four months, said meteorologist Ni Cushmeer of the National Weather Service in Seattle.

After last winter, people in Darrington are ready for a real El Nino, Mayor Joyce Jones said.

An accumulation of nearly 9 feet of snow fell in the Cascade foothills town from December through February, and huge piles of the icy leftovers sat around for months. Burials at the cemetery were postponed, the town spent most of its annual street budget to move the snow around, and the high school baseball team wondered if it would ever get out on the diamond.

Jones threatened to spend months in Hawaii if she had to live through another winter mess.

“We hope there’s not quite as much snow this year,” Jones said. “But along with putting their gardens to bed, people are already getting ready for winter.”

John Meriwether, planning director at the Stevens Pass ski area, is taking an wait-and-see attitude about the coming winter. “Looking back at the records, we’ve had good El Nino years and bad ones. A well-timed snowstorm can be great,” Meriwether said. “Last year was a La Nina year, but there wasn’t much new snow later in the season. It wasn’t a slam-dunk for us.”

El Nino, the periodic warming of equatorial Pacific waters, occurs about every three to seven years, weather service meteorologist Mike McFarland said. La Nina, which brings cooler, wetter weather, shows up just as often.

Most years, the weather is somewhere in between, he said.

“The whole El Nino – La Nina thing is overplayed,” McFarland said. “We’re pretty good at forecasting a few days out, but there are no guarantees.”

At Arlington Hardware, nobody is slacking off the winter planning, manager Taylor Jones said.

“We try our best to be prepared, because you never really know what you’re going to get in this state,” Taylor Jones said. “We sold out of snow shovels last year. We’ve already ordered in more of those.”

That’s a good idea, Cushmeer said.

“Snowstorms and days with heavy, cold rain are typical winter weather,” Cushmeer said. “That doesn’t change even with an El Nino year.”

The last El Nino winter in 2006-07 produced November flooding in the river valleys of Snohomish County.

That’s why emergency officials are getting ready for a flood season, county emergency management director John Pennington said.

“We’re looking at the El Nino prediction for minor flooding with some skepticism,” he said. “But last year the weather service was extremely accurate and in six months we broke records for floods, snow and heat.”

What happens may depend in part on how much snow falls early in the mountains, Pennington said.

“If a significant snow pack grabs the mountains and holds, it could slow the flood waters down,” he said. “However, we’re still under the assumption that sometime around election day we’ll see some flash flooding and river flooding. That’s what we’re prepared for. If we get through November without significant floods, we may not have any trouble until spring.”

Whatever happens, emergency officials are going into the next season with confidence, Pennington said.

“We’re kind of getting this down to a science,” he said. “Good plans breed great response, and that’s where we are.”

Gale Fiege: 425-339-3427; gfiege@heraldnet.com.

For more weather information, go to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Weather Service at www.noaanews.noaa.gov.