San Diego’s soggy Saturday will produce a ‘green up’ that will make wildfires less of a worry

Strong, dry Santa Ana winds still lie ahead. But their ability to cause and spread ruinous wildfires across San Diego County has been greatly diminished by Saturday’s fulsome rain.

And it’s not over yet. Two more storms are taking shape.

“Fire season never completely ends but we’re going to see a green up of vegetation that will make it much harder for fires to start,” Sebastian Westerink, a National Weather Service forecaster, said as sheets of rain fell from San Diego to Palomar Mountain.

“We’ll get more over the next four or five days.”

The Pacific storm that moved ashore Friday night dropped 1.27 inches of precipitation in San Diego through 4:30 p.m. Saturday. That’s about a quarter-inch more than the city averages during the entire month of November. It’s been coming in bursts, rather than sustained hits.

Westerink said that gives much of the rain time to sink into the soil rather than flow toward the sea as runoff. It was sublime for the county’s massive community of backyard gardeners.

That doesn’t mean that Saturday’s storm didn’t cause problems. The California Highway Patrol said that lots of water pooled up on local freeways, contributing to serious motor vehicle accidents and traffic backups throughout the region.

The rain also forced the Del Mar Race Track to take the day off. San Diego State University averted problems by placing a tarp over the field at Snapdragon Stadium in Mission Valley, where the football team was preparing to host Boise State at 7:30 p.m.

To a degree, all of this is unexpected.

The West Coast is experiencing a weak La Niña, a periodic change in the climate that often prevents North Pacific storms from making a hard, deep drop into Southern California. There was little reason to believe that things would be different this fall.

But San Diego got a decent amount of rain in October, which is usually quite dry. And now, this, a juicy weekend storm that drew lots of moisture from the subtropics as it headed south.

By Thanksgiving, San Diego could have recorded 2 to 3 inches of precipitation for the rainy season, which officially began on Oct. 1. Winter — typically the wettest time of year — is still more than a month away.

Rainfall totals during 2-day period ending at 4:30 p.m. Saturday:

Camp Pendleton, 2.40 inches; Oceanside, 2.30 inches; Palomar Mountain, 2.05 inches; San Onofre, 1.98 inches; Carlsbad, 1.73 inches; Mount Laguna, 1.63 inches; Rainbow, 1.43 inches; Valley Center, 1.40 inches; San Marcos, 1.29 inches; San Diego International Airport, 1.27 inches; Vista, 1.25 inches; Alpine, 1.24 inches; San Diego Country Estates, 1.19 inches; North Island, 1.01 inches; Encinitas, 0.97 inches; Miramar, 0.94 inches; Point Loma, 0.89 inches; Montgomery Field, 0.88 inches; National City, 0.74 inches; Chula Vista, 0.71 inches.

Help report the story

Readers are asked to help the Union-Tribune’s coverage of Saturday’s storm by letting us know what’s happening in their neighborhoods. E-mail Gary Robbins at gary.robbins@sduniontribune.com.