Stuck With Sticky : Weather: Warm temperatures, humidity likely to stay around as more storms brew off Mexico.

Darby hit town last week. Estelle should swing by in the next few days. Frank could pay a visit next week, and Georgette is starting to make her move.

What all that means is that the unusually muggy weather we’ve been having lately is likely to stick around a little longer. Forecasters say it won’t be as bad as it was last weekend, but it will still be a bit sticky.

After that, they say, it could get better--or it could get worse.

Darby, Estelle, Frank and Georgette are, were or could become hurricanes. All of them were born in the tropical waters off the west coast of Central America.

In most years, such storms follow a track that takes them north and west, into that great empty space midway between Hawaii and Mexico, where they whip themselves into a frenzy without much notice before fizzling.

But this year there was El Nino, a little understood phenomenon that causes the tropical waters to flow farther north, with water temperatures several degrees above normal a couple of hundred miles off the Southern California coast.

The storms, which draw their power from the warmth of the sea, have been following this flow, according to Rick Dittmann, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc.

The first storm was called Darby. It already had been downgraded to tropical storm status before it stalled off Southern California on July 7, but it still packed plenty of moisture. Scattered rain from the remnants of Darby fell across the southern half of the state for a week, with the last showers from it reported over the High Sierra on Wednesday.

Now we’ve got Estelle, another hurricane that by Wednesday had decreased to tropical storm status and stalled off the coast, this time about 1,000 miles west of the southern tip of Baja California. Estelle won’t deliver as much moisture as Darby, but Dittmann said it should be muggier than usual for the next couple of days--with humidity ranging from 40% to about 95%.

After that comes the uncertainty.

“We’ve got two rapidly developing systems, Hurricane Frank (about 450 miles south of the tip of Baja California) and, southeast of that, tropical storm Georgette, which could become a hurricane,” Dittmann said. “They will throw a big wrench into the forecasting machine.

Dittmann said the effects, if they do reach Southern California, probably won’t arrive until the end of next week.

“It’s tough to figure where their moisture and clouds are going to go,” he said. Temperatures should reach the upper 80s and low 90s today after overnight lows in the mid-60s. The high temperatures Wednesday were 82 degrees in Santa Ana; 86 in Anaheim; 72 in Newport Beach; and 83 in San Juan Capistrano.