El Nino to Bring Long, Wet Winter, Top Forecaster Says

The nation’s top weatherman predicted Tuesday that an intensifying El Nino meteorological condition will bring powerful, long-lasting storms to Southern California this winter that will be comparable to the devastating deluges here during the winter of 1982-83.

Ants Leetmaa, director of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, issued his troubling forecast during a national El Nino Community Preparedness Summit at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium attended by Vice President Al Gore and a host of federal, state and local officials.

Leetmaa said the unusual warming of waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean--a pattern characteristic of the El Nino phenomenon--”is unprecedented in amplitude.”

“The forecast indicates that this pattern will grow a little bit and, in fact, will peak sometime during the December-January-February time frame,” he said. “At that time, we think, it will be comparable to the 1982-83 event, but no bigger.”

These latest forecasts by Leetmaa, an oceanographer and meteorologist trained at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, join a scientific chorus of climate experts, oceanographers and atmospheric researchers who have been warning for months that this winter’s weather will be unusually severe in Southern California.

The experts have been basing their predictions on a review of California’s meteorological history and a study of data from satellites, sensor buoys and climate models generated by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration’s weather computers.

Leetmaa added that “the southern part of the state is expected to have rainfall in the order of 200% of normal. We anticipate more storms, and the storms will be more intense.”

Because of the uncertainties of weather, Leetmaa said, the forecasts may not come true. But he said the computer models strongly support “conservative” predictions that along the coast of Southern California, “this winter will rank among the top third of the wettest winters on record.”

Although the critical period for Southern California will be in the winter, he said, some effects of El Nino probably will linger through the spring during the normal seasonal warming of the coastal waters.

Like the state El Nino summit staged in Sacramento a week ago by Gov. Pete Wilson, Tuesday’s national summit in Santa Monica--sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency at the urging of California Sen. Barbara Boxer--presented little new information about the much-publicized weather phenomenon.

FEMA Director James Lee Witt and Democrats Gore, Boxer, and Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland spent much of their time at the podium praising President Clinton and one another for promoting the campaign to help the public get prepared for the anticipated El Nino onslaught.

“We must act before the rains begin,” Gore said. “We want to be safe, rather than sorry. . . . An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

The lone Republican to get any credit Tuesday was Wilson, who was hailed by his appointee, state Office of Emergency Services Director Richard Andrews, as a man “who is deeply concerned.”

Andrews took note of the bureaucratic tangle of state and federal agencies that has stalled efforts by the county’s Department of Public Works to clean out forests of brush, trees and trash clogging several major flood control channels and river bottoms.

“We need a coordinated partnership,” Andrews said.

Witt said the principal purpose of the summit was to bring home the point that America needs to prepare for natural catastrophes instead of simply reacting to them after they occur.

“Our goal, starting with this summit, is to change the way we deal with disasters,” Witt said. “If we don’t, we will continue to pay for our poor planning in lost lives and lost property, over and over again.”

Witt announced a new campaign, “Project Impact,” under which pilot communities have been chosen to demonstrate the benefits of disaster mitigation. The communities include the cities of Seattle, Oakland, Pascagoula, Miss., and Deerfield Beach, Fla.

Tuesday’s summit concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Los Angeles radio talk show host Michael Jackson. The panelists included Witt, Andrews, Army Corps of Engineers Maj. Gen. Russell L. Fuhrman, Sierra Club Executive Director Carl Pope, Los Angeles’ assistant city administrative officer Ellis M. Stanley, Los Angeles County’s Office of Emergency Management executive Constance Perett and representatives of several businesses and industries.