Can you believe this? A wild record in Los Angeles February 28, 2019

Did you realize that for the first in recorded history Downtown Los Angeles did not record a 70° day in the month of February. Records go back to 1878. There have been three Februaries that recorded only one 70° day – 1891, 1919 and 1998. In this age of warming temperatures, this is an incredible feat!

This is what the month looked like day by day. We had only one above average day on February 12th. Every other day was below average. Average February temperature is 68° at the beginning of the month and 69° on the 28th. The month of February averages twelve 70° days.

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Putting the Rain this Winter in Perspective February 19, 2019

It feels like we can’t go even a few days without looking ahead to our next rain storm. And I’ve been asked many times, “Is this normal?” “Are we setting records?” “When was the last time it was this rainy?”

Here are your answers:

Let’s start with the rain season which starts October 1st. As you can see from the above graphic it’s been a great year! Three of the first five months have produced above average rain and January and February have been incredible.

But when you compare this water year to the top four years on record, we aren’t even close! We are currently sitting in 54th place of the rainiest years. Records go back to 1877 giving us 142 years of numbers to compare. To be fair we have through September to add to this amount but typically once we get past April we don’t get much more rain in Southern California. How many more spots do you think we’ll climb?

It is great to see that our 15.68″ of rain in Los Angeles is above our yearly average of 14.93″. San Diego is also above its yearly average, 10.35″ just passed its seasonal average of 10.34 inches.

While the month of February has been very wet we haven’t set any rainfall records.

We are in the top 20% of rainiest Februaries (29th place) but it’s going to be tough to climb much higher with only light rain in the forecast for the next seven days.

The long range models are hinting at another atmospheric river taking aim on us the second week of March so this wet season should continue. The question is how much how much more rain will we get before we finish the month of April?