My next-door neighbor, Manny, is a fourth-generation commercial fisherman. His forecast for this winter is a biblical deluge starting in late October. I wasn’t living in Southern California during the previous El Niños of 1982-83 and 1997-98, so I can only believe the old timers aren’t telling tall tales. Talk about deluge, the rainfall total in Santa Barbara for the month of February 1988 was almost 22 inches!
El Niño and the blob that has formed off the Pacific Northwest are combining to build hopes that the winter of 2015 will be one for the record books and help ease our protracted four-year drought. El Niño is characterized by warmer-than-normal surface water temperatures in the equatorial Pacific, in an area that stretches from the coast of Peru to west of the international dateline. Scientists are now saying there's a better than 90 percent chance that we will see a wet and wild winter.
Some cyclists may park their bikes this winter. I’ll be riding my Nishiki every day.