  The metal absorption lines found in association with \lya absorbers of
moderate to high HI column density contain valuable information about the
metallicity and ionization conditions within the absorbers and offer a stronger
test of models of the intergalactic medium at \sim 3$ than HI absorption lines
alone.
  We have developed a method to predict the strengths of metal absorption lines
within the framework of cosmological models for the \lya forest. The method
consists of evaluating a quantity, the Line Observability Index, for a database
of hundreds of candidate metal lines, allowing a comprehensive identification
of the lines the model predicts to be detectable associated with a \lya
absorber of a given HI column density and metallicity.
  Applying this technique to a particular class of models at \sim 2-4$, we
predict that the OVI(1032 \AA, 1038 \AA) doublet is the only practical probe of
the metallicity of low column density absorbers (HI \simlt 10^{14.5} cm^{-2}$),
that CIV (1548 \AA) is the strongest line with rest wavelength $\lambda_r >
1216$ \AA{} regardless of HI$, and that the strongest metal lines should be
CIII(977 \AA) and SiIII(1206.5 \AA), which peak at HI \sim 10^{17} cm^{-2}$.
