Rainy Season Begins on a Dry Note : Weather: The county has received less than one-tenth of the normal level. But the trend doesn’t necessarily mean the return of the drought.

A year that began drenched in torrential rain is coming to a very different and dry end.

Ventura County is already two months into the rainy season--well, the official rainy season, anyway--and so far, the county has received less than one-tenth the rain it normally would. In a typical year, about two inches of rain would have fallen in the city of Ventura during October and November. This year, the figure is less than one inch.

Storms charging in off the Pacific this fall have largely avoided California, instead dousing Oregon and Washington.

But area farmers are not panicking. Local meteorologists say the dry weather does not mean that California’s years-long drought has returned. But both groups are wondering when the rain will come.

“It’s not unusual at all to have a dry November,” said Rea Strange, owner of Pacific Weather, a private weather service in Santa Barbara. “On the other hand, it is a little bit alarming to see that the storms tend to be so far north. It kind of disturbs me for the rest of the winter. It could be a dry one.”

The arid air, chapped lips and occasional dust clouds scurrying across the Oxnard Plain can be blamed on a dome of high pressure covering the region. The high pressure has diverted storms well to the north, said Bill Hoffer with the National Weather Service.

Typically at this time of year, the high pressure system begins to weaken as low pressure systems over the Pacific grow stronger. This year, the high pressure has remained intact.

“These low pressure systems coming from the Gulf of Alaska are really vigorous, and they’re trying to punch through, but they just can’t,” Hoffer said.

The difference between the weather in the Pacific Northwest and Ventura County wasn’t lost on Laurel Youell. Last weekend, he was chopping down pine trees--in the rain--close to his home near Portland, Ore. On Thursday, he was getting those trees ready for sale at a stand he operates in Thousand Oaks, sweating in the 80-degree weather.

The summer-like temperatures and dry air can suck the moisture out of cut trees, so Youell’s co-workers at the St. Nick’s Christmas tree stand on Thousand Oaks Boulevard planted their fragrant merchandise in buckets, stuck them under a yellow tent and hosed them down for protection. The water dripping from the trees was the only moisture in sight.

“If we were in Portland, we wouldn’t have anything covered, but in Southern California, it’s a good idea,” Youell said.

Local farmers have found the weather has its advantages. Many of the county’s crops, including avocados and citrus plants, thrive in the unusual warmth, said Larry Rose, sales manager at Brokaw Nursery.

“The Indian summer has really given us a good period of growth,” he said.

The extended warm season could bring an earlier harvest or increase the size of the fruit, he said. But since the trees are not easing into winter as they would normally, the weather does pose a possible threat.

“The downside is, if it became cold suddenly, it would really kill everybody,” Rose said. “It puts us in a real delicate position if we get the jet stream dipping down suddenly.”

The area is expected to cool down this weekend, according to the National Weather Service, but the change will not be drastic. The service forecasts morning and evening clouds along the coast, with highs in the mid-60s to the mid-70s close to the water. The inland valleys will see highs in the 70s.

Although the five-day forecast is, again, devoid of rain, Dolores Taylor with the Ventura County Public Works Agency Flood Control Department said the two inches of missed precipitation could arrive with a single good rain.

“In a nice Pacific storm, we can get that easily overnight,” she said. “My dad was an old water man with Casitas [Municipal Water District], and he used to say, ‘If you have a dry fall, you’re going to have a decent winter.’ ”

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County Rainfall

Here are this season’s rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control Department. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

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Rainfall Normal rainfall Location since Oct. 1 to date Camarillo 0.11 02.28 Casitas Dam 0.17 03.47 El Rio 0.16 02.25 Fillmore 0.20 03.30 Moorpark 0.11 02.42 Ojai 0.11 03.07 Upper Ojai 0.17 03.35 Oxnard 0.11 02.10 Piru 0.02 02.58 Santa Paula 0.15 02.90 Simi Valley 0.06 02.19 Thousand Oaks 0.07 02.39 Ventura Govt. Center 0.18 02.38

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