Guarantee of Rain Fulfilled--Barely

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 weather service 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 still mostly sunny, the weather service 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 weather people felt a little bolder, saying that rain was on the way and issuing a flash-flood watch for the Malibu area.

By 5 p.m.--an hour before the time at which the weather service figures the afternoon has ended and the night has begun--rain started falling in Redondo Beach, Santa Monica and other Westside communities. Not a lot, but enough to vindicate the forecaster who had crawled out on the 100% limb.

Robert Baruffaldi, a weather service meteorologist, was asked why--since nothing in nature seems certain--the agency had 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 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.

An what about an even bigger storm that is supposed to strike Sunday or Monday?

He did not attach any percentage figures to that chance.