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Hello, summer weather: 90-degree temps on way By BILL VARBLE OK, you've had six months of winter and six days of spring. Now get ready for summer. The forecast calls for plenty of sunshine and highs around 90 this weekend. This isn't like those other weekends. This is really supposed to happen. "We're just looking at a warming trend at this point," says Roger Gerig, a weather specialist at the National Weather Service in Medford. Gerig says temperatures should be up sharply today and peak Sunday in the low 90s in Medford and 80s in Ashland. If you think it's been unseasonably cold this month, you're right. Temperatures have been running six to eight degrees below normal. "You have a west and northwest flow," Gerig says. "That's what's been bringing the clouds and cool days. But that pattern is not as good a precipitation maker as a southwest flow." Howard Prairie Resort's Chris Johnston thinks he can pinpoint the moment the season changed in the southern Cascades. "It was last Saturday at 2 in the afternoon," he says. "People started coming in off the lake saying, `You know, I think it's happening."' And before that? "I wouldn't even call it spring," he says. "We had winter, then last week maybe what you could call spring." He says he's talked to a lot of resort operators about the effects of the weather this spring. "The consensus is, people haven't done spring yet," he says. "They're still inside. "Normally we have two dozen reservations by now for YMCA camps for July and August. We have one." The forecast calls for the high pressure over southwest Oregon to weaken Monday and Tuesday and for the next weather system to arrive by Wednesday. The Memorial Day weekend forecast is for a low pressure trough and a threat of showers or thunderstorms Friday and Saturday. Highs should be in the 80s during the week and 70s by the weekend. "This is our first real good chance for thunderstorms this year," Gerig says. Although May was cool and cloudy, it hasn't been a wet one. The weather service has measured 0.66 inches. Normal is an inch. In May 1942 there were 18 days with measurable rain. In May of 1945 it rained 4.58 inches. The long-range outlook is for normal rainfall and slightly cooler than normal temperatures through July. "After that it should be normal," Gerig says. "A pattern like this is hard to break. Once the landmass warms up, it's easier to hold the high pressure." Are winters longer and springs gloomier these days than in the drought years of the 1980s? "That'd be my observation," Gerig says. "I remember years we planted tomatoes in early April. You might have had to cover them, but you didn't lose them." But hey, it's not all that wintry now. "People have been calling and asking how much snow we have," Johnston says. "We haven't had any for a month. Now they're calling and saying, `How's the fishing?' or `How's the wind?"' Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA