(Wines&Vines) - With the last of the harvest coming off vineyards across North America, growers are beginning to focus on preparing for what could be another wild winter.

On the West Coast, the first portents of a strengthening El Niño pattern has growers in California preparing for mudslides, while those in the Northwest are watching the mountains for snow following the driest season in a decade.

“We still haven’t seen enough evidence to show much change from what I think the long-term forecasts have been,” Greg Jones, an environmental science professor at Southern Oregon University, told Wines & Vines.

“Forecasts are pretty much following the typical El Niño influences with greater chances of broader warmer than average conditions in the western U.S.,” he wrote. “The (90-day) outlook tilts the odds to near-normal to below-median precipitation in the (Pacific Northwest) and the expansion of above-normal precipitation for the southern portion of California into the desert Southwest and Texas.”

He cautioned, however, that only time would tell.

“The next 30 days are really critical because the onset of winter. It really should have already started by now,” he said of conditions in the Northwest, where rains have fallen but temperatures haven’t. “We’re definitely already behind. If it stays relatively dry, and we don’t see much activity in terms of colder temperatures and more storm systems coming through, then I think the winter forecast of dry and warm is going to be pretty spot-on.”