Rainy Season

Every afternoon the clouds pile up on the high ridges above this collapsed city and the breeze descends with a tell-tale earthy smell. The rain usually waits until dark, when short but spectacular bursts deluge random bits of the capital and unleash torrents of rock and gray mud. The rainy season is bearing down, and Haiti is not ready. Three months after the earthquake killed more than 200,000 people, more than 2.1 million Haitians are still living in tents and under tarps, many on dangerous hillsides and tidal flats.

Instead of the commuters typically packed into the bright blue and red "tap tap" pickup truck weaving through Haiti's capital, a man, shrunken, dehydrated, dressed in a diaper and attached to an IV, lay on the floor. As the ad-hoc ambulance in Port-au-Prince attested, cholera refuses to leave the country. The bacterial disease that ravaged Haiti last fall had spread quickly to all regions, but calmed down in the dry spring months. With the rainy season now in progress, clinics across the country are again bustling with seriously ill patients.

Let us not scorn those forecasters who, months ago, so confidently predicted a drier-than-normal Southern California winter. Instead, let's calmly note that Sunday's ferocious storm dumped so much water throughout the region that it shattered records in several communities. Downtown Los Angeles and many other areas have exceeded rainfall averages for an entire season ? and there's still three months to go. "La Niña definitely was a bust," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge and one of several meteorologists who had predicted last fall that La Niña, a climatological phenomenon marked by cold ocean-surface temperatures, would bring a drier-than-normal rainy season.

This is the last installment of "100 Facts for 100 Years of Machu Picchu. " On July 24, 1911, Hiram Bingham III, a Yale professor, came upon the vine-covered ruins of the ancient Inca city, which the Spanish had overlooked for three centuries. To commemorate the anniversary, look for staff writer Christopher Reynolds ' story on his recent trip to Machu Picchu,  T. Craig Ligibel's story on his father-daughter trek  through the Vilcabamba Mountains and Sarah Karnasiewicz's article on the solitary wonders of Colca Canyon.

The thunderstorms that were expected late Friday night and early this morning mark the beginning of this year's rainy season in Orange County, officials said. A dip in the jet stream that is paralleling the California coast was expected to bring scattered storms to the area, said Wes Etheredge, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc., which provides forecasts for The Times. "It is pretty much the start of things to come this winter," he said.

As the rainy season approaches, public safety officials are urging residents of Topanga and other mountain canyons to be on the lookout for mudslides and flash floods, which pose an increased threat after last year's fires. The threat is greater this year because the fires left hillsides bare of vegetation, which helps retain rainwater, said Rosie Dagit, conservation biologist for the Topanga / Las Virgenes Resource Conservation District.

The inch or so of rain that drizzled over the San Fernando Valley on Tuesday and Wednesday brought the season's total closer to the norm, but probably not close enough to reach normal levels before the rainy season winds up at the end of this month, weather officials said Wednesday. The total precipitation to date in the Valley reached 11.5 inches Wednesday, still short of the 12.1 inches that is normal for this time of year, said Curtis Brack, a meteorologist with WeatherData Inc.

A week of desert-hot temperatures turned Miami-moody Friday morning as commuters awoke to a mix of lightning, thunder, scattered storms and even hail, marking the start of the year's rainy season. "For rainless Angelenos, this definitely was a shocker," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. But aside from rattled nerves and some pre-weekend excitement, the weather caused little or no major damage across Southern California.

WHAT HAPPENED LAST WEEK: A national weatherman likened California's wave of March storms to a "tremendous rally" in the late innings of a baseball game. What is missing from the baseball analogy is that California went into the ninth inning of the rainy season trailing 20 to 0. It got perhaps as many as 10 runs, but the odds against getting 11 more before the end of April are so high that the drought is bound to hand California a fifth losing season.

As another Alaskan storm approached Ventura County Thursday, firefighters offered free sand and sandbags to residents in areas where blackened slopes with no vegetation pose a threat of mudslides. Up to 50 bags per household will be made available to residents in areas hit hard by the wildfires, Ventura County Fire Chief George Lund said. The bags can be used to build berms that will help divert mudflows if storms expected today and this weekend overwhelm the denuded earth, he said.

Let us not scorn those forecasters who, months ago, so confidently predicted a drier-than-normal Southern California winter. Instead, let's calmly note that Sunday's ferocious storm dumped so much water throughout the region that it shattered records in several communities. Downtown Los Angeles and many other areas have exceeded rainfall averages for an entire season ? and there's still three months to go. "La Niña definitely was a bust," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge and one of several meteorologists who had predicted last fall that La Niña, a climatological phenomenon marked by cold ocean-surface temperatures, would bring a drier-than-normal rainy season.

Frequent heavy rains and holiday closures on weekends have made recent weeks challenging for farmers market growers and shoppers. California's dominance in fruit and vegetable production stems largely from the rarity of rain during the peak summer season for many crops, allowing them to mature and be harvested with relatively few problems from spoilage. That advantage was turned on its head recently, as crops were damaged and farmers couldn't harvest them or drive to market. Many farmers are taking well-deserved breaks for the holidays, but for others, just showing up at a market can require heroic efforts.

The wettest December since 1889 has left hillside areas across Southern California dangerously saturated, bringing a heightened risk of landslides and further flooding in the next few months. More than 14 inches of rain has fallen in some hillside areas in just the last two weeks, and officials said the saturation levels could intensify in January and February, when Southern California typically gets most of its rain for the year. Engineers are using helicopters to fly over some hillside areas hit by recent fires, looking for signs of fissures or earth movement.

A rule for rainy days Re "Storms line up to pelt region," Dec. 20 Now that our rainy season has arrived with a vengeance, perhaps it's time to remind both motorists and, apparently, local police forces that a state law passed a few years ago requires headlights to be on if your windshield wipers are. It's common-sense traffic safety: Rain-spattered side windows make unlit cars disappear as they pull up or change lanes behind and...

A massive stampede at a festival in the Cambodian capital killed at least 349 people Monday and injured hundreds more in what the prime minister called the country's worst tragedy since the 1970s reign of the Khmer Rouge. The disaster occurred when a crowd attending a concert on an artificial island to celebrate the end of the rainy season returned to the mainland across a bridge roughly 30 yards wide and 300 yards long. As the human crush intensified, some people suffocated where they stood; others tried to jump over the side.

Reporting from Sinkyone Wilderness, Calif. ? The wind roared like a Roosevelt elk in rut. Rain smacked into plank walls like waves breaking on rocks. Down the bluff, the Pacific surged and heaved. What bothered me, though, was the scurrying in the rafters. We had found shelter after hiking through a downpour but apparently were not alone in this drafty seaside barn in Mendocino County's Sinkyone (pronounced SINK ee yoan) Wilderness. A muffled plunk sounded inches from my face, the only part of me not encased in a mummy bag. Struggling to free an arm, I groped for the flashlight.

The first storm of the season--a lightning-laced, thunder-clapping, one-night stand that provided more sound than fury--blew itself out Monday afternoon, but another is expected to follow tomorrow. The storm dropped less than half an inch of moisture in the Valley, enough to flatten new hairdos but not enough to cause flooding or street closures. Light showers are predicted for Wednesday, with less rain expected than the storm system that moved through Monday.

People are preparing for the El Nino winter by repairing roofs, replacing their windshield wiper blades and investing in new umbrellas. But government officials also want you to change the way you do your wash, clean your dishes and even brush your teeth during the heavy storms predicted for Southern California.

A week of desert-hot temperatures turned Miami-moody Friday morning as commuters awoke to a mix of lightning, thunder, scattered storms and even hail, marking the start of the year's rainy season. "For rainless Angelenos, this definitely was a shocker," said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. But aside from rattled nerves and some pre-weekend excitement, the weather caused little or no major damage across Southern California.

Heavy rainfall has set off deadly mudslides and widespread flooding across Central America and Mexico's southeast, killing more than 50 people and displacing more than half a million. In Guatemala, rescuers citing the possibility of more slides called off the search for 15 people who remained missing after a highway mudslide Sunday killed 45. In Mexico, the Red Cross said more than 600,000 have been displaced in five states as several rivers flooded towns and villages, mostly in the states of Veracruz and Tabasco.