North Coast residents are basking in the warm, sunny a days of a classic Indian summer, and they can expect it to last awhile longer. Maybe too long.
Rain, which averages just less than 2 inches in Santa Rosa during October, hasn't been in the forecast all month and isn't on the horizon any time soon. And weather prognosticators are predicting a drier than usual November.
That's not a formula for replenishing reservoirs or ending the threat of fire season.
With two successive years of below-normal rainfall, including the driest spring on record, North Coast water officials would love to see a good rainy season for a change.
But now, the call for water conservation is expected to extend beyond the end of October.
"Using less, less is more -- that's the continued message throughout the winter," said Brad Sherwood, spokesman for the Sonoma County Water Agency, which serves 600,000 households in Sonoma and Marin counties.
He said there is plenty of water in Lake Sonoma behind Warm Springs Dam, but the level in Lake Mendocino near Ukiah remains a concern, primarily because of its impact on the fall salmon migration.
State water officials say that statewide as of Oct. 1, storage was about 73 percent of average, much better than in the drought year of 1977, when it was a dismal 35 percent of average.
But fire officials are urging continued caution.
"We're in the peak of the fire season still. If we had rain on the horizon -- a couple of inches -- we would start downsizing," said Cal Fire Capt. Mike Wilson of the Sonoma-Lake-Napa office. "People still need to be as vigilant as they have been during the hottest part of the summer."
Wilson said his department will remain at peak staffing with a full complement of seasonal firefighters, aircraft and other resources until Nov. 3, at least.
From there, he said fire officials will take a good hard look at weather conditions to determine staffing levels.
"Fall can be the most volatile time for most large destructive fires. They happen normally in September, October, early November," Wilson said.
He said low humidity combined with offshore, hot, dry winds that can blow through the night make for a perilous autumn for firefighters.
Don't expect much rain to ease the threat, at least according to the National Weather Service's Climate Prediction Center, which is calling for below median precipitation in November for California and sections of the Southwest.
Forecaster Ed O'Lenic, who made the prediction, said Tuesday the cause is "weak, cold event conditions in the Pacific Ocean, which have been lingering."
He said there are some remaining symptoms of La Ni?, associated with cooler-than-normal surface waters in the mid-Pacific, near the equator.
La Ni? tends to means a dry winter for Southern California and a soaking for the Pacific Northwest. Sonoma County lies in a transition area between the dry and wet regions.
But there is no La Ni?, or El Ni? expected this winter, said Mike Halpert, deputy director of the Climate Prediction Center.
That's why his agency is basically neutral on forecasting the upcoming winter rains in California beyond November and says there are equal chances for above-normal, normal, or below-normal precipitation.
"We don't see a climate-forcing pattern coming out of the tropical Pacific, at least a predictable one we understand," he said.
He noted "seasonal forecasts are very difficult to do."
Halpert said the forecast for a dry November is certainly not absolute.
Sherwood, the spokesman for the Water Agency, said the water supply in Sonoma County and parts of Marin is actually in good shape, largely because of the ample amount in Lake Sonoma.
"In terms of levels, we would have to see probably many consecutive years of dry weather before we have to worry," he said.
But declining levels of Lake Mendocino, which is about 50 miles north of where Lake Sonoma releases enter the Russian River, are a big concern because that water is released into the river to help the chinook salmon migration.
"With a dry winter or dry November we have to monitor that (Lake Mendocino) storage level very closely for the fish," Sherwood said.
In the past two years the Water Agency has successfully requested its client cities, including Santa Rosa, Rohnert Park and Petaluma, to cut Russian River water use by 15 percent during the dry season.
That has allowed less water to be pumped out of the Russian River, and more of it be stored in Lake Mendocino to aid the fish run through the fall.
He said that as of Oct. 19, 328 chinook have migrated up the Russian River past the rubber dam near Forestville, "a good indicator migration is taking place and every drop counts for the fish, especially on the upper Russian River."
But with a dry winter, he said continued conservation efforts take on even greater importance.
"Even if there's a torrential downpour in November people should use less water," he said. "We have to save for the bad years because we don't know what's going to happen. The climate is fluctuating so much."
You can reach Staff Writer Clark Mason at 521-5214 or clark.mason@pressdemocrat.com.
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