Seattle has been less rainy than L.A. this year — but for how long?

Los Angeles has received more rainfall than Seattle so far this year. 

If you tripped reading that sentence, stay down — San Francisco and even Portland have received more rain than Seattle, too.

By this time of year, Seattle typically has received around 16 inches of rain. As of Thursday, 13.48 inches of rain have fallen since Jan. 1, which puts the city at about 85% of its normal rain total, according to the National Weather Service. 

Los Angeles, on the other hand, has nearly doubled the 8 inches of rain it typically has received by this time of year. The city’s 15.77 inches of rain is just part of a two-year rain total not seen since the late 1800s, the weather service said.

So, who’s the responsible Seattleite who moved down to California and took our rain with them?

They go by the name of El Niño.

El Niño, which is actually a weather pattern characterized by cooler and wetter southern winters and drier and warmer northern winters, funneled the brunt of the Pacific Ocean’s moisture south of Washington so far this year. La Niña does the opposite, pelting the Pacific Northwest with the jet stream and wetter weather and leaving states like California relatively dry.

The pair are naturally occurring global climate phenomena that appear every two to seven years on average, typically lasting up to a year at a time, as a function of how the Pacific Ocean interacts with the air above it, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

We had a particularly strong El Niño pattern this winter, said meteorologist Dana Felton with the weather service in Seattle, but that doesn’t always guarantee Western Washington will receive below-normal rainfall.

It does, however, typically increase the chances California will get above-normal rainfall, which is why Los Angeles got soaked and Seattle got … well, just about its typical rainfall total.

A 25-day period of storm weather in January was responsible for nearly half of Seattle’s 13.48 inches of rain.

Since then, it’s been relatively dry.

In fact, “we’re way below normal rainfall for April,” Felton said.

As of Tuesday, Seattle was sitting at 0.43 inches of rainfall this month, which is a fraction of the 3.18 inches typical for the city in April.

A system Thursday was expected to nudge us closer to that mark, as “we could see more rain than Seattle has received for all of April,” Felton said. Felton said Tuesday there was even a chance Seattle could break the daily rainfall record for April 25, which is 0.59 inches. On Thursday evening, the weather service reported 0.54 inches had been recorded so far that day.

While Los Angeles is ahead of Seattle in total rainfall, El Niño is weakening “pretty rapidly,” Felton said, adding he expects cities in California will start to trend closer to average rainfall in the coming weeks.

Meteorologists predict there’s an 85% chance El Niño will be gone by June, in which case neither El Niño nor La Niña will be present. Then, the weather service’s Climate Prediction Center’s long-range forecast predicts above-normal temperatures and below-normal precipitation in Western Washington, “which is our trend around here for the summers,” Felton said. 

The odds are better than 50% that La Niña will arrive by the second half of summer, Felton added, which would likely lead to a boost in heat.

The three La Niña summers from 2020 to 2022 were all historically hot. The average summer temperature of 74 degrees across the country in 2021 tied for the hottest on record, and 2022 and 2020 marked the third- and sixth-hottest summers, respectively, according to The Washington Post.

The chance of a scorching summer is especially high when La Niña comes on the heels of a strong El Niño event, like that of this past winter, The Post said.

This winter’s relatively dry dance in Seattle may have broader climate impacts, too, Felton said, like potential effects on this year’s wildfire season. The snowpack is running “at best, 75% of normal, and in some spots, it’s less than that.”

As April rolls into May, we’re past the time of year when the Cascades and Olympics will receive substantial snowfall to boost their packs.

Just last week, on April 16, state Department of Ecology officials declared a statewide drought emergency, bracing for the expected dry summer.

Meteorologists start monitoring fire season in July. But a below-normal snowpack and a drier-than-normal winter could very well lead to fire season starting as early as June, Felton said, especially if conditions stay warmer and drier than usual in the next six weeks.

Meanwhile, down in the City of Angels, the skies are expected to stay soggy into May.

According to state data, water reservoirs across California are sitting pretty with 32 million acre-feet of water in storage, or 118% of their historical average.

Does any Californian want to move to Seattle and bring some water with them?