Something Like Rain
The gang from the Warner Bros. TV and animation division, masters of fantasy on the screen, weren’t about to let a little real-life rain spoil their annual picnic Thursday.
Which is why about 500 people, many of them in Hawaiian shirts in keeping with the event’s theme, were picnicking in a defunct restaurant in the basement at the Sherman Oaks Galleria, doing the limbo and whirling hula hoops. There were even a few Hawaiian-style decorations left over from the previous tenants to provide atmosphere.
Still, it just wasn’t the same as if they were outside at Balboa Park, as planned, observed Charlie Howell, producer of “Pinky & the Brain.”
“It’s a little creepy,” Howell said. “It’s like when you’re in school and it’s raining and you have to spend recess in the cafeteria.”
The morning drizzle began around 8 a.m. in the San Fernando Valley and ended around noon, said meteorologist John Sherwin of WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times.
“It’s not really raining in the true sense of the word,” Sherwin contended as sprinkles dampened sidewalks throughout the Los Angeles Basin.
“Well, maybe it is kind of raining, but it’s not like a real storm system.”
That sounds like a semantic difference to most of those getting wet, but it’s a significant difference to forecasters like Sherwin.
Most rainfall in Southern California, he explained, is the product of storm systems that arrive after long trips across the Pacific--”real rain, from real storms,” as he put it.
He said the scattered sprinkles that fell Thursday were instead from a low-level layer of cool air that tends to hover along the coast this time of year, soaking up marine moisture.
“There’s a high-level frontal system that’s been moving southeastward down the coast, and it’s been pushing that marine layer inland against the mountains around Los Angeles,” he said. “It’s been wringing out that sponge.”
The scattered drizzles should give way to drier, breezy weather today as that system loosens its grip, he said.
Thursday’s rainfall was light and spotty. Daily totals included 0.08 of an inch in Van Nuys and Monrovia, 0.05 in Northridge, 0.03 in Burbank and 0.07 in Westwood. Chatsworth, Pasadena, San Gabriel and Malibu reported no measurable rain.
By nightfall Thursday, 0.04 of an inch had fallen at the Los Angeles Civic Center, raising the total for the season, which runs from July 1 through June 30, to 31 inches even. That makes this El Nino-enhanced, 1997-98 season the fifth-wettest since record keeping began 120 years ago.
The wettest season was 1883-84, when 38.18 inches of rain fell on Los Angeles after the eruption of the Krakatau volcano in what is now Indonesia.
Precipitation records were set in numerous places throughout the northern hemisphere after the eruption hurled a vast cloud of volcanic ash and dust into the air, disrupting worldwide weather patterns.
Sherwin said the current frontal system should move through the Southland by this morning, leaving breezy, cloudy weather in its wake.
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“It should be partly cloudy and a little warmer on Saturday,” he said, “and mostly sunny after noon and quite a bit warmer on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, with high temperatures into the 80s in the valleys. It’s almost summer, and that’s more like what the weather ought to be at this time of year.”
For some, Thursday’s drizzle was a break.
Yvonne Lovil, 48, of Woodland Hills, said she planned to take her daughter-in-law, Isabel, and her 4-year-old grandson, Bryan, to Universal Studios on Thursday until the rain changed their plans. But, she said, after having spent Wednesday at Disneyland, relaxing at Northridge Fashion Center was a more comforting option.
“The rain helped change my plans,” Lovil said. “And, after yesterday, I was grateful for today’s weather.”
