Once again, the Anchorage Hillside was being pounded by hurricane-force winds on Tuesday. But this time, the National Weather Service promised the nightmare should soon end for resident of the mountainous suburbs. Tuesday's hurricane-strong storm -- the fourth to hammer into the Hillside in three weeks -- appears to be the last in a string of weather monsters to march east across the Gulf of Alaska and then turn north to slam ashore in Prince William Sound before bursting over the Chugach Mountains with house-bashing force.

Meterologist Dave Striklin noted that one of the last storms ripped into several houses in the Bear Valley area above the city. Bear Valley is one of the higher subdivisions in the foothills of the Chugach Front Range. Since the first storm hit on Dec. 4, Bear Valley and other subdivisions have repeatedly clocked winds in excess of 85 mph. Damage has been widespread. Homeowners have been without power several times. Trees have been flattened.

Stricklan, who manages the Weather Service "mesonet'' that tracks local conditions around Anchorage in real time, said one gust even sucked a windcup off the anenometer on a wind-reporting station above Goldenview Drive. Even with only two cups spinning, that anenometer was registering 60 mph gusts around noon Tuesday as the latest storm began to gather strength.

The "high wind warning" for the Hillside wasn't due to kick in until after 3 p.m. It forecast winds up to 90 mph. Hurricane force is 73 mph. This one was expected to hit with enough intensity to push winds to 60 mph on the lower Hillside and brings gust up to 45 mph into the heart of the Anchorage Bowl.

Stricklan said local meterologists have gotten pretty good at pegging the intensity of these storms even if they have no clue as to why they are happening. This was supposed to be a La Nina winter in Alaska. In a typical La Nina winter, cool currents spin north out of the mid-Pacific Ocean driving state temperatures down and limiting the force of storms. But this is looking more like an El Nino winter with warm water shooting north from the mid-Pacific to intensify the storms that normally march across the Gulf and push them into the Alaska mainland. Why?

"You'll have to call back in a couple months,'' Stricklin said. By then the climatologists, the people who look at the long-term picture, might have begun to get their hands around what happened with a winter that started with a "mega storm'' in Western Alaska's Bering Sea, and then settled into a drumbeat of Anchorage storms. Global warming, of course, always enters that discussion. Warmer waters in the Gulf of Alaska mean more intense storms. But Stricklin, like many others, says a good connection between these storms and climate change is hard to make. It isn't like this hasn't happened before.

"It does happen on occasion,'' Striklin said. "A pattern sort of locks in...(but) it's all about to change.''

Once this storm moves through, he said, the string of hurricane-force events should break. It looks like high pressure air will build over Western Alaska to push these low-pressure storm systems south of the state. The season should then begin to settle into a more winter-like norm, resembling the cold days of November in Anchorage.

"We had all that snow in November,'' Striklan said. "I looked back through the top-10 snow years, and what followed in December -- 8 out of 10 times -- was a very snowy December, and a very cold January.'' Not this year. December brought near average snowfall, but it also brought twice the normal amount of rain: 1.68 inches versus an average of less than three-quarters of an inch. At the weather service office's near the airport, Striklin noted 51 inches of snow had fallen as of Tuesday, "and we've only got about 15 inches. Most of ours just kind of melted.''

Or washed away beneath heavy rains that have made much of Anchorage into a giant skating rink. Meanwhile, the normally snow-covered mountains above the snow are in many places bare thanks to the wind, which scoured the rock and tundra bare at higher elevations and flattened the trees at lower elevations. But cross your fingers, a White Christmas may still arrive in time. Sort of like in the movies.