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Expect more dreary weather in 2000 By PAUL FATTIG If you really want to be ready for the new year, you'd better dust off your raincoat and keep your thermal long johns handy. Never mind Y2K: La Nina may be about to rain -- or snow -- on your New Year's Day parade. The weather pattern that soaked the Rogue Valley and blanketed the area mountains with snow last winter is likely to repeat in the winter of 2000. While the presence of La Nina doesn't necessarily mean a repeat of the wet winter of 1998-99, the likelihood is there, reported Dennis Gettman, science and operations officer at the National Weather Service office at the Medford airport. "Just based on La Nina, you can expect a wet winter," he said during an annual workshop for emergency managers and the media Thursday afternoon. "What occurred last year is fairly consistent with an average La Nina year." He was referring to the huge area of colder-than-normal water known as La Nina found in the Pacific Ocean, which weather scientists have credited with creating wet weather cycles in the Pacific Northwest. That's opposed to its water-borne twin El Nino, a system influenced by a warmer-than-normal area of the Pacific that scientists believe brought drought-like weather to the region earlier this decade. The long-range predictions by the agency's Climate Analysis Center mirror the forecast by state climatologist George Taylor, who has also called for winter storms beginning in January that will be colder and wetter than normal. The effects of La Nina will continue to soak and chill the region through March, Taylor predicted. Just how much precipitation and how chilly it may get are not known. Gettman was quick to observe that the two ocean patterns are not the only criteria that dictate the climate in the Pacific Northwest. "I wouldn't want anyone to think that climate predictions is as simple as trying to determine whether you've got an El Nino or La Nina," he cautioned. Noting that long-range forecasting sometimes needs a technical adjustment, he said either pattern doesn't necessarily mean there will be floods in Southern California or a drought in Southern Oregon. Yet the vast Pacific is the greatest source of energy when it comes to dictating weather, he said. "With all this energy it stores and the changes in the position of this energy around the globe, it is going to effect our overall weather patterns," he said. The 1998-99 water year that ended Aug. 31 brought 22.71 inches of precipitation to the weather service office at the airport. The normal for the year is 18.86 inches. The driest water year on record was 8.87 inches in 1993-94, an El Nino year. While there was no record rainfall during the recent water year, which is based on the agricultural year, above-normal rain fell beginning in October and continued most of the winter. Skiers were delighted with the heavy snow in the mountains ringing the Rogue Valley. Slightly above-normal temperature is expected through December, along with heavier-than-normal precipitation, Gettman said. But the new year is expected to come in with a big chill in January and February with continued cooler-than-normal temperatures through early spring, he said. "That's what an average La Nina will do," he said. The precipitation forecast calls for above normal precipitation through February, followed by near-normal precipitation beginning in March and continuing through May in the year 2000, he added. Meanwhile, the long-range forecast calls for slightly above-normal temperatures along with above-normal rainfall this month. "We're off to kind of a rocky start because we haven't had much precipitation this month," he said, adding, "We're going to have to really scoot the second half of the month to reach these predictions." Mail Tribune Copyright � The Mail Tribune 1999, Medford, Oregon USA