In the Rain Game, a Stunning Rally : Weather: Series of storms puts L.A. within reach of normal levels.

In weather circles, it has been tantamount to a big late-inning comeback: Los Angeles, choking in drought and running about 11 inches short of a normal year’s rainfall, came up with 10 inches in February and March.

“It’s been a tremendous rally,” said meteorologist Dion Hamilton of the National Weather Service, who predicted that Los Angeles might--just might--reach normal or slightly above-normal totals if one or more large storms roll through in coming months. “We didn’t expect anything like this.”

The recent succession of storms pushed rainfall at the Civic Center to nearly 12 inches since last July 1, about an inch below the year-to-date norm of just over 13 inches. Most of the rain has fallen since the last few days in February, when a persistent high-pressure “ridge” that was shielding California from approaching storms was literally blown away by a powerful upper-atmosphere jet stream.

“It surprised us too,” said meteorologist Steve Burback of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. “It was a real intense (jet stream) because winds were up near 200 m.p.h. . . . at 30,000 to 40,000 feet.

“It’s caused a real turnaround.”

Weather experts and water officials were keeping careful track of the totals to assess the continuing impact of the five-year drought and to shape water-conservation policies in Los Angeles. Though the drought may well continue, a normal year’s rainfall would help ease the political pressures for mandatory water rationing and might bode well for more bountiful rainy seasons in the years ahead.

Los Angeles, which averages 14.85 inches of rain for a full year, last reached that total in 1985-86, when nearly 18 inches of rain was measured at the Civic Center, meteorologists said. As the drought took hold, the city experienced one of its driest years on record in 1989, when only 4.5 inches were recorded.

National Weather Service officials monitor the totals with a network of 42 rain gauges scattered throughout Los Angeles and Orange counties. The information, phoned in from manually recorded stations and relayed electronically from a number of automated sites, is fed into computers and ultimately compiled at the Weather Service archives in Asheville, N.C.

A number of the gauges are at city fire stations, public buildings and even at private homes where equipment meets Weather Service standards. The typical manual gauge is a two-foot-long cylinder with a funnel-like top. Rain enters and flows into a narrow brass collecting tube inside, where it is measured by a wooden dipstick.

Modern automated gauges feature a tiny brass “bucket” which tips whenever one-hundredth of an inch is collected. The movement of the bucket triggers a switch, which sends a signal over telephone lines to the Weather Service computers.

Other agencies also monitor gauges of their own. The Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, which operates about two dozen rain stations in the city, helped discover a malfunction in one of the National Weather Service gauges last week when totals for two gauges did not jibe.

“Forecasters were saying to me, ‘Are you sure your figures are right?’ ” recalled Pat Rowe, who collects rainfall at the Weather Service forecasting center in Westwood. “I got a call from a person at the hydrology division at DWP. He was saying, ‘(Our gauge) shows more rain than yours did.’ ”

The problem turned out to be in one of the brass buckets of the Weather Service gauge downtown, which was not tipping when it should.

“We understand it was corroded and not functioning properly,” said Marty Adams, the DWP’s water control engineer, who oversees a staff of eight hydrographers responsible for charting city rainfall totals.

The malfunctioning bucket has since been replaced.