Rainfall Whets Farmers’ Anticipation

Ventura County ushered in the year’s rainy season Wednesday with gusty but short cloudbursts throughout the county and more than half an inch of moisture on the agriculturally rich Oxnard Plain.

The Santa Clara Valley, where most of the county’s citrus is grown, was showered with more than one-third of an inch, prompting optimism from farmers about the year ahead.

“This will help wash off the trees,” said Don Goodenough, a Fillmore rancher born into an orange-growing family 75 years ago. “When the leaves get dirty, they harbor different pests, and they can’t absorb the sunlight and the nutrients they need.”

Terry Schaeffer, an agricultural meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Santa Paula, said the residual effects of the decaying El Nino current, along with fallout from the June, 1991, eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, could bring a year with rainfall up to 20% above normal.

On the other hand, he said, “it could even be drier than last year. But I can almost guarantee it will be an anomalous year,” he said.

The National Weather Service’s forecast through December calls for normal rainfall for most of Southern California, meteorologist Elizabeth Page said.

The front lost intensity by late Wednesday and was expected to bring cloudy skies, light winds and cooler temperatures today. Temperatures throughout the county should linger in the upper 60s to mid-70s today, Page said.

The rainfall, brought on by a moisture-laden, low-pressure system moving in from the northwest, brought most parts of the county up to normal levels for this time of year and exceeded normal rainfall in some areas, including the Oxnard Plain.

Ventura County finished the 1992 rain year, which ran from Oct. 1, 1991, to Sept. 30, 1992, at 138% of normal. That compared to about 86% of normal rainfall statewide and about 75% of normal in Northern California, where reservoirs are at the lowest they’ve been since the beginning of the six-year drought.

Wednesday’s rainfall caused a flurry of fender-benders and skids, but agencies in the county reported no major injuries. The inclement weather also interrupted power briefly for about 2,200 customers in east Ventura.

The rain sent many residents running for cover, but it didn’t catch Camarillo crossing guard Cecil Robinson by surprise.

“I have arthritis, and I know when it acts up that we’ve got rain a-coming,” said Robinson, clad in city-issue rain gear as he helped schoolchildren and the elderly cross the street and lent a hand to a mailman retrieving letters from a post box.

In Thousand Oaks, workers were in the midst of repairing a leaky roof on the city’s main library when the showers forced them to hastily cover it with a plastic tarp, said Mayor Bob Lewis.

“We had the roof open . . . because it was not the--quote and unquote--rainy season,” Lewis said.

The showers forced the city to close the library and divert customers to the library’s Newbury Park branch, he said.

Lewis said the main library should reopen by Monday.

But the moisture did little to fill the county’s ground-water basins, which are still depleted from decades of overpumping and five years of local drought from 1986 to 1991.

Nevertheless, the basins are in better shape now than they have been since 1983, said James T. Gross, ground-water resources manager for United Water Conservation District.

In addition to the above-normal rainfall of 1991, the higher levels are due to a combination of a county ordinance requiring a 5% reduction in pumping, conservation by cities and growers, and the Freeman Diversion dam, which captures water that would otherwise run down the Santa Clara River and out to sea.

Correspondent Patrick McCartney contributed to this report.

County Rainfall

Here are 24-hour rain statistics to 9 p.m. Wednesday from the Ventura County Flood Control District.

Rainfall Normal rainfall Total rainfall Location last 24 hrs. to date last year Camarillo .08 .24 19.48 Casitas Dam .00 .32 28.86 El Rio .12 .20 19.47 Fillmore .39 .26 26.64 Moorpark .08 .22 21.14 Ojai .00 .28 28.11 Upper Ojai .00 .29 34.63 Oxnard .51 .16 18.82 Piru .12 .25 25.87 Santa Paula .00 .24 26.93 Simi Valley .24 .20 25.40 Thousand Oaks .28 .18 25.43 Ventura Govt. Center .31 .20 20.341