Weather Forecaster Is 100% Right After All

You’ve got to give the folks at the National Weather Service credit. When they say 100%, they mean 100%.

For a while though, they weren’t that sure.

It all started Thursday afternoon, when a NWS forecaster, throwing caution to the winds, advised Southern Californians that there was a “100% chance” of rain on Friday afternoon.

By 10 a.m. Friday, with the skies here still mostly sunny, the NWS began hedging a bit, saying there was a 60% chance. By 1:45 p.m., the figure had dropped to 30%.

But at 3:12 p.m., with their sophisticated radar picking up showers in Santa Monica Bay, the NWS people felt a little bolder, saying that rain was on the way and issuing a flash-flood watch for the Malibu area, but not Laguna Beach.

By 5 p.m.--an hour before the time at which the NWS figures the afternoon has ended and the night has begun--rain started falling in North Orange County and parts of Los Angeles County. Not a lot of it, but enough to vindicate the forecaster who had crawled out on the 100% limb.

Robert Baruffaldi, a NWS meteorologist, was asked why--since nothing in nature seems certain--had the NWS taken the unusual step of guaranteeing rain on Friday afternoon.

“I didn’t write that forecast,” he replied quickly. “I don’t know why they did it. ‘Rain likely’ would have been a better term.”

He said that all the vacillation stemmed from a storm that on Thursday had seemed headed directly for Southern California with what looked like several inches of rain.

“But as it got closer, the storm was not as strong as we anticipated, and it started heading more to the north,” Baruffaldi explained.

Forecasters say between one fourth and one half an inch of rain should fall in Orange County by this morning, when the storm will start moving to the east.

And what about all that talk on Thursday of another storm--even bigger--that’s supposed to strike Southern California late Sunday or early Monday, with rain continuing on through Wednesday?

“Well, that one’s still a pretty big storm, that looks like it could get here by Sunday night,” Baruffaldi said. “But high pressure might build in and push that one to the north too, with just a chance of rain here on Monday.”

He didn’t attach any percentage figures to that chance.

Times staff writer Diane Seo contributed to this story