By Charles F. Bostwick
The Daily News of Los Angeles
WRIGHTWOOD, Calif. — With the belated arrival of chilly autumn weather, commuters in the valleys battled with rain-slick streets while skiers and snowboarders hit the slopes Monday for the first time this season.
Chilly temperatures were expected to prevail through the week and forecasters predicted that El Nino will bring heavier-than-normal rainfall to Southern California starting in January.
Man-made snow produced nearly round-the-clock since early Friday lay 6 to 24 inches deep on three trails at Mountain High ski resort, with the first cold storm of the season contributing a dusting of natural snow, resort operators said.
“Conditions are actually really good -- surprising for opening day,” said 25-year-old snowboarder Jeremy Davis of Thousand Oaks. “I’ve been riding for 12 years. That’s a lot of opening days to go for.
“It’s actually a really good opening day for Mountain High.”
Davis figures the odds this year are for a good snow season, with support from a skiing tradition: Pine cones littering the forest floor in fall portend plentiful snow come winter.
“There’s lots of pine cones this year on the ground,” he said.
Mountain High operators said the opening may seem late but it’s just 10 days behind the seasonal average opening date of Nov. 17. The latest the resort ever opened was Dec. 11, in the early 1990s.
“Some of our best years have come following later openings,” resort President Karl Kapuscinski said.
Monday’s storm dropped about 0.12 of an inch of rain on Burbank and 0.16 on downtown Los Angeles. The snow level was expected to drop low enough overnight to dust Interstate 5 at the Grapevine.
But Santa Ana winds are expected to arrive today, along with daytime temperatures warming to 60 degrees, once again raising the danger of wildfires.
The National Weather Service declared a fire weather watch through Friday for the San Fernando, Santa Clarita and San Gabriel valleys, the Santa Monica Mountains and Ventura County.
Winds could gust to more than 50 mph below passes and canyons before lessening Friday, forecasters said.
Meanwhile, experts say the moderate El Nino conditions developing in the Pacific Ocean are expected to bring heavier-than-normal rain starting in early or mid-January, despite the dry fall. Only 0.50 of an inch of rain has fallen since July in downtown Los Angeles, compared with the average by this date of more than 1.7 inches.
El Nino is the popular name for a climate phenomenon that is linked to sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean and which can impact weather around the globe.
While temperatures in the central tropical Pacific are cooler than they were in the latest strong El Nino, in 1997-98, they are expected to rise in coming weeks, shifting tropical rainfall and the jet stream to steer storms toward Southern California.
“We don’t see the strength of a ’97-98, but even moderate-type events can result in wetter-than-normal conditions,” said Mike Halpert, head of forecast operations for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.
In 1997-98, the jet stream -- a shifting high-altitude band of winds that can top 275 mph -- flowed almost directly east across the Pacific, sending storm after storm into California and causing damage estimated at $550 million.
El Nino doesn’t always mean wet weather for Southern California, Halpert said. An El Nino in 1986-87 produced half the normal rainfall in Los Angeles, as the jet stream shifted even farther south and dumped rain on Mexico.