‘Rain year’ comes up dry

Despite a gloomy June, Los Angeles is poised today to record its fourth year in a row with below-normal rainfall.

From July 1 of last year to today, a period designated as a “rain year,” only about 9 inches of rain fell compared to an average of slightly more than 15 inches, said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge.

Southern California hasn’t had an above-average rain year since 2004-05, when L.A. experienced its second-wettest year on record, with rain totaling 37.25 inches. The next year, some meteorologists forecast that El Nino conditions in the Pacific Ocean could lead to a wet winter for Southern California. Instead, L.A. experienced its driest year on record, with only 3.21 inches.

This June was cooler than previous ones. Almost every day was overcast. And the first days of the month were marked by something unusual: rain. This June had twice as much rain as normal, but it only amounted to about 0.15 inches, Patzert said.

“That’s just enough to push the dirt around your car,” he said. “It’s definitely not a drought buster.”

Bill Hoffer of the National Weather Service in Oxnard said that the days leading up to the Fourth of July should be warmer than usual, hovering around 80 degrees in downtown L.A.

There are glimmers of hope, at least for the relative short term. Meteorologists from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla are forecasting El Nino conditions for this fall. Temperature increases in the surface temperature of the eastern and central equatorial Pacific could at long last mean above-normal rainfall for Southern California.

But Patzert said the last El Ninos forecasted have been disappointing for Southern California. He said that conditions in the Pacific Ocean would have to “grow rapidly” for El Nino to give the region a good dousing. Patzert has argued that the region is locked into a more long-term dry pattern.

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hector.becerra@latimes.com