Storm Passes, Worst Is Over . . . Maybe : What Comes Next Is an Iffy Proposition

If you think it has rained on Orange County a lot lately, you’re right. But weather forecasters say it’s too soon to break out the canoes.

This season’s total for Santa Ana is 2.56 inches, more than three times the average of .81 inches by this date.

In the last 10 days, 2.38 inches of rain have fallen on Santa Ana, nearly 15 times the 30-year average of .16 inches for the same 10-day period. Thursday’s total of .53 inches at Santa Ana through 2 p.m. was the most rain recorded at that location on a Nov. 5, except for the same date in 1944, when .80 of an inch fell.

None of this means we’re in for an unusually wet and cold winter, meteorologists say.

‘Warmer Than Average’

Extended forecasts from the National Weather Service predict near-normal precipitation and “warmer than average” Southern California temperatures for the period of Nov.1-Jan. 31.

The reason: High-pressure areas over the West Coast are expected to block most storms.

What’s normal?

WeatherData, which provides weather information to The Times, says the average monthly rainfall for Santa Ana is 1.38 inches in November, 1.76 inches in December and 3.17 inches in January.

At the weather station atop the Orange County Engineering and Finance Building in Santa Ana, 1.12 inches of rain fell in just the first five days of November 1987.

“But we don’t know if that’s completely accurate,” says Dick Runge, a county flood-control employee who monitors the weather station atop the Orange County Engineering and Finance Building in Santa Ana. “The birds have gotten in the gauge up on the roof, and they dropped rocks in there and clogged it up, so we had to clean out.”

As a result, county employees have been supplementing their rain data with measurements from another gauge near Bristol Street and Santiago Creek.

Average daily high temperatures for Santa Ana are 73.7 degrees for November, 68.8 degrees in December and 67.8 degrees in January, according to WeatherData. So far this month, the average daily high has been about 68.8, 4.9 degrees below normal.

The wettest November day in Orange County was recorded in 1879, when 3.67 inches of rain fell, according to historian Jim Sleeper’s Orange County Almanac. The November with the most rainfall occurred in 1900, when 7.68 inches of rain drenched the county. The wettest season was not 1900, but 1883, when 32.65 inches fell.

Forecast ‘Wrong Weather’

“To be sure,” Sleeper writes, “today through the modern miracle of highly sophisticated satellites, meteorologists can now predict the wrong weather far in advance. “

Michael Lewis agrees.

A Los Angeles-based meteorologist for the National Weather Service, Lewis says the current extended forecast of near-normal precipitation and warmer-than-normal temperatures “shouldn’t be taken as the gospel truth.”

“Nobody believes them, including weather forecasters,” Lewis says. “Three to five days in advance is about as far as accurate as we can go. Ten days is stretching it.”

Ninety-day forecasts have about a 2% accuracy rate, Lewis says. “They’re based on the historical record over 30 years, and the problem is any storm system, like the one we’re having now, can throw the whole thing out of kilter. You can have a November with 9 inches of rain one year, followed by a November with no rain the next.”

‘Reputable Prophet’

So much for historical averages, according to Lewis, who says they’re about as reliable as the stock market.

In his almanac, Sleeper recalls that in the fall of 1929 (a month after the stock market crashed), a local “reputable prophet” warned that it would be a “remarkably wet winter” because the maple leaves turned colors quickly that November.

“In consequence,” Sleeper writes, “.02 (inches) fell the following month” and the season ended 2.75 inches below normal.

The maple leaves are turning, but November has a long way to go.