SPECIAL REPORT: Are we in for another wild winter?

We pretty much experienced it all last winter: flooding in Santa Cruz, Monterey and San Benito counties.

Then there were mudslides along the Big Sur coastline and then there was the wind. Who can forget that day in February when wind gusts approached hurricane strength knocking down thousands of trees and leaving residents without power for days.

So, how do we know what to expect this winter? Is it even predictable? Seasonal forecasting is tricky.

Jan Null, an expert on El Nino and La Nina weather patterns, worked at the National Weather Service for decades tracking the weather on the Central Coast.

“There is no one to one correlation between El Niño being wet for any part of California and La Niña being dry. On the averages, you have more wet years during El Niño’s and more dry years during La Niñas, but you have a huge range of values that those averages are being developed from.”

Last year, we experienced a weak La Niña. Usually, weak La Niñas mean dryer than normal weather for the Central Coast, but last year was a bit weird, it was one of the wettest on record!

So to come up with a long-range forecast for this winter, KION’s Chief Meteorologist Dann Cianca mostly looked at water temperatures in different areas of the Pacific Ocean and factored in global climate change, too.

We’re already in a weak La Nina so it looks like we’re in for average temperatures and a whole lot less wet than last year. So at this point, it doesn’t look like we’re in for another wild and wet winter.

But forecasting is full of surprises. Remember the “blob?” that big area of warm water off the Gulf of Alaska? No sign of the blob so far but it could reappear and that could dry things out further.

Bottom line is folks can expect an average to slightly dry winter with average to slightly warm temperatures.