An El Nino Year?

By Erik Skindrud

Lindsey Soileau shovels snow from her Crested Butte, Colo., driveway during a series of heavy January storms. Record snow and rainfall have hit California, Nevada and neighboring states, causing floods, mudslides and avalanches.

Is El Nino behind the storms that have battered California and other parts of the west this year? The answer is yes. And the answer is no.

Yes, it turns out, mild El Nino conditions do exist in the Pacific Ocean but not off the coast of South America, where warmer-than-normal waters tend to influence North American weather. The recent deluge in California and neighboring states is due to other factors, the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center, or CPC, said in January.

They include a persistent trough off the West Coast and a weaker-than-average jet stream across the central and eastern Pacific.

?EUR??,,????'?????<

Residents can't blame El Nino for the rain, but there are a few effects that may be linked to the weather condition.

?EUR??,,????'?????<

While many regions have received record or near-record precipitation amounts this winter, experts caution against the assumption that the close to 10-year drought is over. It would take three or four (or more) wet years to end the drought, they agree.

At Payson, Ariz. (home to one of the country's strictest water-use ordinances) officials have no plans to relax rules anytime soon. That decision is only made once a year-in April.

The town is taking a wait-and-see approach.

?EUR??,,????'?????<