7 amazing weather facts about Los Angeles.
LOS ANGELES — Summer normalcy has returned to Los Angeles — at least as far as rainfall is concerned.
The City of Angels is about to wrap up the three-month Meteorological Summer on Aug. 31 without registering a drop of rainfall in its downtown rain gauge.
WHY SUMMER SHOULD BEGIN ON JUNE 1
The last time it rained in the heart of the city was on May 5 — a dry streak of 118 days and counting.
This summer will be the 22nd Downtown Los Angeles has had without a drop of rain since records have been tracked in 1877, and the 58th out of those 147 years of records with a trace of rain or less — 39% of all summers.
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – AUGUST 05: A view of Manhattan Beach of Los Angeles in California, United States on August 05, 2024.
(Tayfun Coskun/Anadolu / Getty Images)
The last summer to go raindrop-free was 2020, though 2022 only received a paltry 0.01 inches — barely enough to wet the ground.
But this summer stands in stark contrast to last summer when the remnants of Hurricane Hillary brought record rains to Southern California.
Los Angeles received 2.99 inches in 48 hours between Aug. 20-21, which set 2023 as their wettest summer on record by far. Ironically, every other day of that summer failed to have any measurable rain. Take out Hillary, and it would be back-to-back summers without measurable rain.
HILARY BLASTS CALIFORNIA WITH CATASTROPHIC FLOODING
As the sun-kissed movies of Hollywood and picturesque postcard scenes of Southern California brag, rain isn’t really a part of the summertime vibe as it can be in the occasionally thunderstorm-filled afternoons across the South, East and Midwest.
Southern California usually sits under a massive ridge of high pressure that sprawls across the Desert Southwest in the summer, keeping it dry and hot. But the region is far west enough to avoid the conveyor belt of monsoon moisture that can plague its neighboring states to the east.
Long dry streaks are nothing new in SoCal — the current 118-day streak barely ranks in the Top 70. Their record is 219 days in a row without rain, set in 1997.