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By Anna Skinner
Associate News Editor
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Meteorologists in California have shared that Los Angeles has already received an entire year's worth of rain only five months into the water year, which runs from October to September.
The excessive rainfall has been a result of a slew of atmospheric rivers that have battered the state this month. Last year, more than a dozen of them helped alleviate the state's severe drought situation and replenished many of the state's reservoirs, but the storms also caused devastating floods and landslides.
Atmospheric rivers are defined as a "long, narrow region in the atmosphere—like rivers in the sky—that transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics," according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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Another moisture-laden storm arrived in the Golden State on Sunday and brought heavy rain to the northern half of the state first before working its way south on Monday. Since the storm's arrival, Los Angeles has received an additional 1.99 inches of rain to Los Angeles, according to a National Weather Service (NWS) report. It brings the city's February rainfall total to 12.96 inches, making it the fourth wettest February in Downtown Los Angeles since records began in 1877.
"The rainfall total of 12.56 inches of rain (so far) this February is 88 percent of the average seasonal rainfall in Downtown Los Angeles, which is 14.25 inches (based on the 30-year period from 1991 to 2020)," the NWS report said. "The rainfall total for the 2023-2024 water year now stands at 17.79 inches, which is about 8 inches above the normal to date, and more than 3.5 inches above the normal for the entire year."
The report said that even if no more rain falls in Los Angeles through September, the city's seasonal rainfall will still be 125 percent of normal.
Half of the city's rainfall came from an atmospheric river that hit California earlier this month, bringing more than 7 inches of rain to Los Angeles and causing catastrophic floods.
The most recent storm has now moved out of the Los Angeles region, and NWS meteorologist Mike Wofford told Newsweek that he doesn't expect any additional rain from this storm, although there is a slight chance for rain on Monday.
Wofford said that the El Niño climate pattern could be why Los Angeles has received more rain than normal.
"Going into the winter, the expectation was that we would have higher rain amounts due to the El Niño situation in the Pacific," Wofford said. "That tends to bring storms farther south an pull in more moisture."
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