High Pressure System Bakes the Southland : Weather: Storms are blocked to the north. Despite sunny skies and record temperatures, forecasters say chances are still good for a wet winter.

A massive high-pressure system brought more sunny skies and record temperatures to Southern California on Monday, but forecasters said chances are still good for above-average rainfall here this winter.

Top readings in the 70s broke records in Paso Robles, San Luis Obispo and Santa Barbara on Monday, and the high of 86 at the Los Angeles Civic Center fell just one degree short of the record for the date, set in 1902.

The overnight low in Downtown Los Angeles was 59 degrees, which tied the previous record high minimum for the date, established in 1928.

The balmy weather that started before Christmas has come from a series of high-pressure systems that have blocked the usual onshore flow of moist, marine air from the Pacific while holding wintry storms at bay, forecasters said.

One such storm from the Gulf of Alaska had been headed this way for several days, and it looked for a while as though there could be at least a few sprinkles here by tonight. However, an unusually strong ridge of high pressure built over Southern California on Monday, forming a barrier that will keep the main body of the storm well to the north, meteorologists said.

The storm system should bring cloudiness that will keep today’s temperatures at least 10 degrees cooler than Monday’s, but no rain is expected south of the San Joaquin Valley.

Anyone who thinks it has been drier than usual here lately is right.

The National Weather Service said the total rainfall in Los Angeles during December was only 0.78 of an inch, about 1.25 inches less than normal for the month.

Not to worry.

Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., said conditions still appear to be shaping up for normal--or above-normal--rainfall in January and February, the months during which Los Angeles usually gets its heaviest rainfall.

Measurements by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration continue to confirm a return of El Nino--a phenomenon of shifting winds and ocean currents that generally brings unusually heavy rainfall to Southern California during the winter.

The phenomenon, which prevailed in late 1992 and early 1993 after an eight-year hiatus, is thought to have caused last winter’s unusually wet conditions in California and extreme cold in the eastern United States, along with last spring’s severe flooding in the Midwest.

For the time being--at least through Saturday--there is no rain in sight for Southern California.

And after that?

“The El Nino pattern hasn’t let up,” Brack said. “January and February are normally the wettest months. It could still happen.”