Lack of Rain Fails to Whet Drought Fears

Southern Californians have grown accustomed to the we’re-so-lucky routine. It happens almost every year about now.

The local weather broadcaster points to shivering scenes of snowbanks as tall as 11 feet in Boston, New York and Philadelphia and says cheerily, “Of course, it was nothing like that in Los Angeles today, where the temperature reached 85 degrees. . . . “

Blue skies and mild temperatures aren’t always reasons for celebration, as the drought-prone Southland has a history of proving. But water officials say that a change in people’s water-use habits and other factors have kept reservoirs so full that nobody’s especially worried about a drought--unless one lasts for three or four years.

“The last drought lit a serious fire under all of us,” said Ed Means, chief of operations for the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, which supplies 27 agencies serving 16 million people in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties. “It had the ultimate effect of drought-proofing the state for the near future.”

The rainy season is measured from July 1 to the following June 30, and so far this season the region is well below normal, according to meteorologists at WeatherData Inc. Los Angeles has recorded a paltry 1.45 inches of rain; the norm for this time of year is about six inches. By this time last year, the total was about 11 inches.

Dry as it is, though, it’s nowhere near a record. By the end of January in 1976, only 0.59 of an inch of rain had fallen on Los Angeles. “The good thing is that the month after that--February of ‘76--it rained more than three inches,” said Bob Carl, a meteorological technician with the National Weather Service.

“So there’s hope,” Carl said. “There’s definitely hope.” But not right away.

The forecast through Wednesday calls for partly to mostly cloudy skies--but no rain--with high temperatures in the Los Angeles Basin in the high 60s, possibly 70. Lows will be in the 50s, said Curtis Brack, a WeatherData meteorologist.

The lack of rain this winter is largely due to some persistent ridges of high pressure that have been blocking the normal, southward flow of wet storm systems from the Gulf of Alaska. Detouring north around the high pressure, these storms have been contributing to the miserable weather back East.

“Southern California has sort of a summertime weather pattern right now, and there doesn’t seem to be anything coming along that will change it soon, “ said Rob Kaczmarek, a WeatherData forecaster.

Because January and February normally are the wettest months in California, the continued lack of rain sharpens memories of drought. The most recent great drought in California lasted from 1988 to 1993, draining reservoirs, killing crops, wrecking lawns and creating an almost frenzied push for conservation.

And conservation has worked.

Water officials say there was a steep drop in the demand for water during the last two years of the drought--specifically, 1991 to 1993. And, they say, the reduction in demand has continued unabated. They credit a variety of in-home measures, including low-flow shower heads and toilets, and new strains of lawns that don’t require as much water.

Even so, the steady rainfall last winter brought welcome relief to a drought-prone region. Last winter yielded so much rain that the state’s reservoirs contain about triple the normal amount of water.

And because Southern California imports most of its water from Northern California and the Colorado River--fed by streams in Utah, Colorado and Wyoming--the water situation is even better.

“As of Jan. 3, the rainfall in the northern part of the state was 73% of normal,” Means said. “On the Colorado River side, it was 85% of normal. Of course, the figures are low for Southern California. But you have to remember--just a few weeks ago, we were having flooding in the [San Francisco] Bay Area, which helps us tremendously.”

Taking in all factors, the figures tell a story that even the most cautious observers find comforting.

Southern California’s demands for water in 1996 are an estimated 1.7 million acre-feet, Means said. The Colorado River aqueduct system contains 1.3 million acre-feet, “meaning all we’ll have to get out of the state system is 400,000 acre-feet. We’ll come up with that easily.”

An acre-foot is 326,000 gallons of water, about what two families would use in a year.

Times staff writers Len Hall and Eric Malnic contributed to this report.