Cold but No Cigar : December Was Chillier, Wetter Than Usual but It Wasn’t One for the Books

Yes, it’s been cold and wet lately in San Diego.

But no, it’s not even close to a record in either case.

Today marks the halfway point for the statistical weather year, and the official word is San Diego is a little colder and wetter than normal to date, but all is expected to even out during the second half of the season, said National Weather Service forecaster Wilbur Shigehara.

The month of December has been the biggest contributor to the colder and wetter-than-average weather San Diego has been having, according to Shigehara.

As of Tuesday, this month ranks as the 13th coldest and 35th wettest December since 1850, he said.

Rainiest December Was 1921

At Lindbergh Field, 2.67 inches of rain had fallen this month by 4 p.m. Tuesday, well above the December average of 1.30 inches, according to Shigehara. However, the rainiest December on record at Lindbergh Field is 9.26 inches in 1921.

By this date last year, 4.55 inches of rain had fallen during the season, according to Shigehara, but rainfall figures leveled off during the second half of the season.

“Last year we went flat after December, and our long-range charts say we’ll go flat again,” Shigehara said.

To put the rainfall figures in perspective, Shigehara pointed out the record for rainfall in California is 11.5 inches in 80 minutes, set in Campo in January, 1878.

“That’s almost double the amount of rain we’ve had since July, and it fell in just an hour and a half,” Shigehara said.

The mean temperature for December, 1987, is currently 54.2 degrees, while the normal mean temperature for December is 57.4 degrees, Shigehara said. The coldest December on record was 1891, when the mean temperature was 52.2 degrees, he said.

“We have had a lot of people calling us saying it feels a lot colder this year,” he said. “One reason may be because we have had five days where we were 10 degrees below the normal low (for that date). We also had one day that we established record cold, and one day that we tied for second place.”

The total rainfall for the season to date is 6.48 inches, well above the normal season to date figure of 2.98 inches but well below the record rainfall by this date, Shigehara said.

The weak cold front that moved through San Diego on Tuesday brought only .03 of an inch of rain to the airport by 4 p.m. Sunny days and cold nights were expected to return by Thursday as high pressure builds, according to Shigehara.