San Diego Quickly Zeroing In on Record Dry Year : Weather: When a storm front finally moves in, the city is ready to embark on a $150,000 cloud-seeding program.

The folks down at Body Beautiful in San Diego have always gambled on the weather. Open seven days a week, rain or shine, the car wash promises its customers three-day rain insurance: If there’s a shower within 72 hours, they’ll scrub your car again, free of charge.

Lately, however, general manager Jeff Johnson found himself almost wishing for a downpour. One by one, special projects and repairs were piling up--things that his crew normally would have done on a rainy day, when business was slow. Finally last month, Johnson closed Body Beautiful’s doors for three days, just to catch up.

“We were hoping to do it during a rainy stretch, but we just never really had one,” he said. “There has not been a day all year that we didn’t wash any cars.”

It now looks almost certain: barring a heavy rain this week, 1989 will be the driest calendar year in San Diego history. Since Jan. 1, only 2.82 inches of rain have fallen--more than 6 inches short of the average annual total of 9.32 inches. The lowest annual total, set in 1863 when Abraham Lincoln was president, is 3.02 inches. So, unless two-tenths of an inch of rain falls during the next five days, 1989 will find its place in the record books.

“There’s a small hope of getting some rain before the month ends,” said Wilbur Shigehara, chief meteorologist for the National Weather Service, which has been recording rain levels in San Diego since 1850. Shigehara said he is watching a storm system now hovering over Canada to see if it will come south to drench the dry hillsides of Southern California this weekend. “Will it hang together and reach San Diego? It’s too close to call right now.”

During the past few months, the lack of rain and the frequent Santa Ana winds have fueled brush fires and parched the throats of San Diegans. In October, a storm brought 0.47 of an inch of rain to the area. But in November, less than one-tenth of an inch fell. And in December, usually San Diego’s fourth-wettest month, not a droplet has fallen, as compared with December, 1988, when 2.23 inches of rain fell--almost as much as this year’s total to date.

Even though 1989 has yet to clinch the record, San Diegans have been dealing with the effects of the dryness for some time. As the southeastern United States experienced its whitest Christmas in a century, Southern Californians noticed their lawns seemed thirstier than normal. As in one corner of the nation, New York City residents donned galoshes to keep out the moisture, San Diegans in the opposite corner smoothed on hand lotion to keep it in.

“I wish it would pour down rain,” said Marilyn Corodemas, the chief deputy commissioner at the San Diego County Department of Agriculture, who said the absence of rain has been a problem for the large nursery industry. “The drier it is, the more they’re having to use other sources of water. Everyone’s having to irrigate more.”

Besides, the transplanted Easterner added, “It’s just real boring to have it be 75 degrees and sunny on Christmas Day. You can’t build a fire in the fireplace, or even wear your new sweaters.”

In an effort to dampen things in the future, the San Diego City Council earmarked $150,000 earlier this month to continue a pilot cloud-seeding program. The program is conducted by a private firm that seeds clouds with a chemical compound to create rain.

Should the program work, it would be good news to Bill Pearce, owner of the San Diego Garden Equipment Center. Pearce, who makes most of his living by selling and repairing lawn mowers, blames the lack of rain for dwindling business this year. In short, he said, when the grass doesn’t grow, few people get the urge to cut it.

“People don’t buy lawn mowers for Christmas presents or birthdays. They don’t buy them unless they really need them,” he said. “My sales are down, and I think it’s going to be one of our worst years ever.”

The last time a fall season was as dry as this one, Shigehara said, was in 1980. The following winter was very, very wet.

“Does that mean this winter might turn wet? It’s hard to say,” he said. “History is no guarantee of a forecast.

“But we can hope,” he said, adding that long-range charts compiled by the Weather Service predict a “50-50 chance of near-normal rainfall” in January and February.

SAN DIEGO’S FIVE WETTEST RECORDED YEARS 1884: 27.59 inches 1941: 24.93 inches 1978: 19.41 inches 1965: 19.03 inches 1983: 18.78 inches SAN DIEGO’S FIVE DRIEST RECORDED YEARS 1863: 3.02 inches 1953: 3.14 inches 1968: 3.68 inches 1929: 4.14 inches 1894: 4.35 inches