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?? <br />cy ana tseuy <br />King have <br />lunch together <br />at Applebee's <br />restaurant af- <br />ter church <br />Sunday, a <br />weekly ritual. <br />Having a so- <br />cial cirde is <br />one thing to <br />consider when <br />deciding <br />-where to retire. <br />Nina Seevers <br />The Coloradoan <br />A dry. <br />. <br />winter <br />ahead . <br />Forecaster: Mountain <br />moisture equals dry <br />Front Range weather <br />By KEVIN DARST <br />KevinDarst@coloradoan.com . <br />Fort Collins residents might not need their <br />snow shovels for a while. <br />A winter forecast from a prominent Univer- <br />sity of Colorado and National Oceanic and At- <br />mospheric Administration scientist is calling <br />for a wet winter for Colorado's mountains, but <br />the trend could mean a dry, windy season for <br />the Front Range and Eastern Plains. <br />"This is actually one of the more predictable <br />(patterns)," said Klaus Wolter, a NOAA and <br />CU scientist. <br />Without El Nino driving storm-making, <br />more storms from the Pacific Northwest could <br />charge into Colorado, Wolter said. El Nino is a <br />warming of the tropical Pacific Ocean that can <br />disrupt weather patterns, potentially bringing <br />more storms to Colorado. <br />Wolter said most of the predictions in the <br />past 50 years for a wetter-than-average winter <br />have come true. In some cases, snowfall was <br />near average, but never has the season tumed <br />out drier than usual, he said. <br />"I decided after that I probably juixed it;" <br />Wolter said. "I find it noteworthy. It just struck <br />me that this is very hard to fmd examples of ... <br />based on 54 years. Maybe the 55th year is the <br />bad year." <br />Not all forecasters are willing to stick out <br />their necks to call this winter's weather, and <br />Wolter knows it. <br />"More power to them who aze making a stab <br />at it;" said Nolan Doesken, the state's assistant <br />climatologist and a senior research associate at <br />Colorado State University. <br />See WINTER/Page A2