After four weeks without any rain, our water year kicked into high gear in January. Around the new year we fell behind our average precipitation after a promising start to the season in early December. In the last two weeks over eight and a half inches of rain have fallen. This brings our season total to 13.99 inches of precipitation as of January 19th. The average in Fernwood for this date is 8.23 inches of rain.
The recent storms left wildly variable totals across the southland, largely due to the lift that our mountains give that serve to wring out the moist air. The Los Angeles Civic center has received 9.22 inches of rain while LAX has only seen 7.14 inches of the wet stuff.
The El Niño indices have been trending toward neutral the last few weeks. This means that we lose most of our long-term forecasting ability. It’s really anybody’s guess how the rest of the season will go at this point. Despite all the rain, California is still suffering from a series of drought years.