Light Rain Won’t Douse Water Woes

A light drizzle slickened parts of Los Angeles on Sunday as another winter storm rolled into town, but forecasters said the moisture would be too little and pass too quickly to do much good in easing Southern California’s water woes.

By today, up to a half-inch of rain was expected to have fallen at the Civic Center and perhaps a half-foot of snow will have dusted the San Gabriel and San Bernardino mountains, according to WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.

The precipitation, however, will probably taper off after scattered morning showers, dashing hopes for much drought relief.

“It’ll be breezy and cool and we’ll start to see the sun making an appearance” by afternoon, said Rick Dittmann, a WeatherData meteorologist.

Forecasters said the mercury will rise no higher than 60 degrees in many areas of the Los Angeles Basin. Sunday’s Civic Center high was 62.

The cold front was working its way down the coast, with the heaviest moisture falling in the Central Valley and across the Sierra Nevada. The morning’s precipitation managed to bypass Santa Barbara, where a drought has forced city officials to enact harsh conservation measures, including a ban on watering lawns.

Forecasters predicted a snow level in the mountains at above 4,500 feet.

“We sure hope so,” said Margaret Krajewski, marketing coordinator for Snow Valley Ski Resort. “Our conditions are great, but the new snow always gets people excited about skiing. Southern California needs to be constantly reminded that there’s snow up here.”

The storm should pale in comparison, however, to the monstrous cold front that hit the state two weeks ago, bringing record lows to the Bay Area, shutting down highways and dumping as much as six feet of snow on Southland mountains.

Despite both storms, Los Angeles is still dangerously below average in rainfall for the third consecutive year.

By Sunday afternoon, the Civic Center had received only about .02 of an inch of precipitation. That gave the Civic Center a total of 5.45 inches for the season, well below the 7.52 that had fallen by this time last year and far below the 11.43 inches considered normal.

“Each one of these storms obviously helps,” Dittmann said. “But Southern California has a long way to go.”