A LITTLE EL NINO? WINTER RAINS WILL BE MILD, OFFICIALS SAY.

Byline: Bill Hillburg Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - El Nino made its comeback official Thursday, but experts downplayed any doomsday scenarios, predicting only normal winter rainfall that will help offset Southern California's driest year on record.

Officials of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service, who have been tracking the phenomenon's development for months, made their call based on new findings of increased sea temperatures in the equatorial Pacific.

El Nino steers winter storms and moisture toward the California coast and also triggers wetter-than-normal weather across the southern tier of the United States.

``This time around, El Nino will not be as powerful as the 1997-98 event, but we will track it closely for any change in its projected strength,'' said Vernon Kousky, a meteorologist at NOAA's Climate Prediction Center in suburban Washington. He predicted the El Nino would maintain weak-to-moderate strength.

Bill Patzert, an oceanographer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, said he stands by his June 27 forecast that El Nino will be anemic at best and should not in any way be compared with El Nino storms that slammed the region in 1982-83 and 1997-98.

``It's not time to start playing the theme from 'Jaws' yet,'' he said. ``The National Weather Service is saying he's back, and I fear the media and the public will get into a frenzy like they did in 1997. We're not going to see anything like we saw in 1997-98.

``This El Nino is no poltergeist; it's a dwarf. We'll have a clearer picture in the fall, but I don't think we'll see any impact at all until January.''

Stuart Seto, a specialist at the National Weather Service's Los Angeles- Oxnard Forecast Office, said the agency's latest long-range prediction calls for near-normal rainfall in Southern California from September through March.

``It's not always true that El Nino brings rain, especially when the condition is weak to moderate,'' Seto said. ``So this year could be iffy.''

Both Patzert and Seto said El Nino could be just the tonic for the Los Angeles area's record dry spell. For the period July 1, 2001, through June 30, the Los Angeles Civic Center received just 4.42 inches of rain, 30 percent of the norm of 15.14 inches and the lowest total since the beginning of rainfall record-keeping in 1877.

``We've been fairly wet throughout most of the 1990s, and a normal rainfall would go a long way to offset this past season's drought,'' said Seto.

``A nice little soaking this winter would be very welcome,'' Patzert said. ``But we've got a long way to go before we see relief. People shouldn't be worrying about leaky roofs at this point. They should be clearing brush because we're still in for a long fire season.''

Eric Lamoureux, spokesman for the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services, said the agency is monitoring weather developments and is prepared to deploy a statewide disaster response plan developed during the 1997-98 El Nino.

El Nino, Spanish for ``the little boy,'' occurs in the Pacific region about every five years, often around Christmas. Fisherman named it El Nino after the infant Jesus.

The phenomenon alternates with La Nina, Spanish for ``the little girl,'' a cooling of ocean water at the equator that normally results in relatively dry winters for Southern California.

Southern California's worst El Nino episode, in 1982-83, battered pleasure piers and coastal and hillside communities from Santa Barbara to San Diego and caused $523 million in property damage statewide. More than four inches of rain fell at many Southern California locations during a heavy storm from Feb. 28 to March 1 in 1983.

The last El Nino, in 1997-98, was preceded by massive preparations by local, state and federal disaster officials. Storms in early February 1998 brought a deluge of flooding rain, causing $550 million in damage and spurring state disaster declarations in 40 of 58 counties, including Los Angeles, Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties.

The 1997-98 El Nino downpours helped to set record seasonal rainfall totals at many locations, including Chatsworth (44.19 inches), Simi Valley (40.05 inches), Northridge (36.10 inches) and Long Beach Airport (29.68 inches).