January and February are normally the wettest months for Southern California.
But January 2022 has gone down in the history books as one of the top 10 driest Januarys in history. Unfortunately, February may follow suit, for some.
Downtown Los Angeles and other SoCal cities receive an average of three to four inches of rain in January with similar amounts in February.
Only one storm came through in mid-January, but it did little for our monthly totals.
Something else stood out during the month, though.
There were many days with amazing sunrises and sunsets thanks to the right amount of high clouds coming from cut-off lows to the south.
A dry offshore flow pattern at the surface prevented any rain from falling.
Then came February.
The first half of February was dry and hotter than average with record-breaking, summerlike temperatures in the 80s and 90s.
On Feb. 15, a cold storm pushed through the strong upper level ridge of high pressure, breaking our weeklong heatwave.
Some cities didn't get any rain at all, while others received only a few hundredths of an inch of rain.
But thanks to a line of thunderstorms embedded in this cold storm, more than a half an inch of rain fell over the Orange County coast, the San Gabriel Valley and the Inland Empire.
Several cities got a coating of hail, including Anaheim, Fullerton and Pasadena.
And one to three inches of snow fell over the high deserts around 2800 feet, including the Cajon Pass, Victorville, Hesperia and Apple Valley.
Another storm coming this Tuesday and part of Wednesday could bring similar unusual winter weather, so watch out for updates from the Spectrum News 1 Weather Team.
We'll take what we can get from this storm because the precipitation outlook for the rest of February and early March doesn't look promising.
