Minor Sprinkles to Clear in Time for Good Weekend

Thursday brought a patina of drizzle to Orange County, which weather experts promised would end by today and do nothing to mar a weekend that ought to be, in the words of one forecaster, “very, very nice.”

Rainfall totals throughout the county “were so nominal as to be virtually insignificant. . . . We barely recorded anything,” said Lane Waldner, a supervisor with the county’s Environmental Management Agency.

The most persistent sprinkles fell in South County, which recorded .08 inches of rain, with most of it wetting the streets of San Juan Capistrano, San Clemente and Dana Point.

The activity Thursday constituted just enough rainfall to push the season’s total to, well, what Orange County ordinarily receives during an average rainfall season, Waldner said. Average yearly rainfall by this point of the season is about 11 inches.

He noted that the current season pales in comparison to last year’s deluge, which produced record rain throughout the county and caused $36 million in damage. One downpour in early January 1995 dropped 6 inches in one day and 2 inches in one hour.

Local officials have received some funds for repair work but are still seeking the balance of that amount from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“The fact that we haven’t gotten all of that is delaying our repair work,” said Tom Connelie, a public works manager with the Environmental Management Agency. “We had a large number of flood control channels throughout the county that suffered major damage last year. And we’re still working very hard to repair those.”

Connelie said the light rainfall of 1996, at least compared to the previous year, “has been of enormous benefit. The work we have accomplished has been aided by the fact that we’ve had a succession of little storms rather than one big one.”

The latest rain was expected to dissipate by early today and give way to a weekend in Southern California that should be “very, very nice . . . and it should stay that way for a while,” said Robb Kaczmarek, a forecaster with WeatherData, Inc., which compiles weather information for The Times.