When It Rains . . .

With its blue skies and pleasantly warm temperatures, Monday hardly seemed like the kind of day to be thinking about rain.

But for staff members of the Ventura County Flood Control District, Sept. 30 has special significance because it marks the day that one water year ends and another is about to begin.

“We celebrate it just like other people do New Year’s,” said Dolores Taylor, the county’s chief hydrologist.

Instead of late-night champagne toasts and choruses of “Auld Lang Syne,” flood-control staffers got up at the crack of dawn Monday and headed into Ventura County’s back-country to collect the year’s final rain data.

They fanned out to 16 stations in mountainous territory, some of it so remote that the sites could only be reached by helicopter. At each gauge--long, thick pipes set into the ground--they measured the total rainfall for the water year that began Oct. 1, 1995, and ended Monday.

Then the pipes were drained, cleaned and topped off with a critical film of oil--which stops water from evaporating once it is collected--in preparation for the new water year.

Taylor said her department is still making its final calculations based on the figures gathered Monday, but it appears that Ventura County’s rainfall average for last winter was about 80% of normal.

It’s still too early to predict what this coming winter has in store. The National Weather Service expects normal precipitation between October and March, with warmer than average temperatures in January, February and March. But beyond that, it’s a mystery, even to water experts.

“Right now it is a crapshoot,” state meteorologist Bill Mork said. “There are no signals out there yet to tell us what is going to happen.”

Taylor said she has heard differing opinions. The Farmer’s Almanac predicts a stormy year, while some weather forecasters expect La Nina conditions and a dry year.

“Mostly it is anybody’s guess,” she said.

Reservoirs in the county are still holding steady.

Lake Bard, the small reservoir in Thousand Oaks operated by the Calleguas Municipal Water District, is down to about one-third capacity, but Calleguas General Manager Don Kendall said there is no cause for concern.

Starting today, water will start flowing into the reservoir again from the State Water Project in Northern California, which Kendall said is still well-stocked from last winter.

“The water year is looking good so far,” Kendall said.

Taylor said the back-country gauges are essential to the Flood Control District because rainfall varies radically between coastal communities and the mountains. The amount of rain that accumulates in places such as the Murietta Divide--in the mountains between Ventura and Santa Barbara counties--likely will be at least twice that for the coast, she said.

Gathering this information helps the Flood Control District develop a better sense of the county’s ground-water supplies. So it is frustrating if something goes wrong with the gauges. In May, when hydrologists went out to look at the back-country gauges, they found that vandals had tampered with three of them, making it impossible to get any worthwhile results.

“It aggravates us to death,” Taylor said.

Sometimes people fill up the pipes with water “just to be funny,” Taylor said. Or they actually batter and bend the pipe.

“It takes a determined vandal because these things are built like a brick you-know-what,” Taylor sighed.

One back-country gauge that the Flood Control District is looking at with particular interest this year is its Last Chance station, between the Topa Topa Mountains and Santa Paula Peak. The Grand Fire, which burned 10,000 acres behind Fillmore and Santa Paula in May, ravaged hillsides that would normally soak up rain, leaving the area vulnerable to mudslides and erosion once rain starts to fall.

By checking the gauge at Last Chance, Flood Control District personnel will have a better sense of how dry the area is and thus how dangerous the conditions will be this coming winter.

“We will be watching that very carefully,” Taylor said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

County Rainfall

Here are rainfall figures from the Ventura County Flood Control District for the past year, in inches. Oct. 1 is the beginning of the official rain year.

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Rainfall since Normal rainfall Pct. of Location Oct. 1, 1995 to date normal rainfall Camarillo 10.89 13.30 82% Casitas Dam 18.74 23.38 80% Casitas Rec. Center 16.77 23.26 72% Fillmore 15.96 18.77 85% Matilija Dam 22.62 26.94 84% Moorpark 13.65 14.75 92% Upper Ojai 16.07 22.29 72% Oxnard 11.40 14.59 78% Piru 13.10 17.35 75% Port Hueneme 9.08 14.06 64% Santa Paula 13.85 17.54 79% Simi Valley 12.77 14.49 88% Thousand Oaks 13.19 15.38 86% Ventura Govt. Center 13.09 16.09 81%

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