February Among Driest, Warmest

February normally is the wettest month of the year in Southern California, but the February that just ended was one of the driest on record. It also was one of the warmest.

In downtown Los Angeles, it rained only one day last month--Feb. 17--and only .29 of an inch fell.

That compares to a normal total for the month of 3.55 inches.

In the record-setting February of 1998, 13.68 inches of rain fell on the Civic Center.

The average temperature in Los Angeles last month was about 60 degrees, roughly 8 degrees warmer than normal, said Bill Hoffer, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

The average temperature for the month is computed by adding each day’s high and low readings, dividing by two and averaging the total.

On Feb. 22, high temperatures set records for the date at 20 weather service stations in Southern California.

There’s no guarantee that the weather in the coming months will be any closer to normal.

Tim McClung, another weather service meteorologist, said the summer-like conditions in the dead of winter have been due largely to persistent masses of cold polar air that have been parking over the Great Basin area of Nevada.

“When that happens, we have a lot of Santa Ana events, offshore winds that warm up by compression as they blow down mountain passes and out to sea,” McClung said. “Los Angeles stays warm.”

He said a ridge of high pressure extending west from the Great Basin forms a shield that also keeps Los Angeles dry.

“Storms ride along the northern edge of that ridge instead of swinging down into Southern California,” he said. “They got plenty of snow in Utah for the Olympics, but nothing fell down here.”

Asked why this is happening, McClung said, “There’s nothing you can really hang your hat on.

“There’s an El Nino coming, but that shouldn’t affect things until next year,” he said.

“The fact is, we have short-term dry patterns and short-term wet patterns here, and right now we have dry patterns and we can’t seem to shake them,” he said.

Last month was not the driest February in Los Angeles--there have been six Februaries since 1877 when no measurable rain fell. But the precipitation total for the rainy “season”--which runs from July 1 through June 30--is 3.95 inches, considerably less than half the normal total for the date of 10.65 inches.

“There’s no guarantee that we’ll make up for this with a lot of rain this spring,” McClung said. “March can be wet, but looking ahead through March 8, we don’t see anything coming.

“It’s still possible to get back up to normal, but we’re running out of time.”