The country at large may usually be jealous of our traditional weather patterns, but things have slightly shifted in 2024: According to the Seattle office of the National Weather Service, in fact, it has rained more in Los Angeles this year than the notoriously wet Washington city.
In a post on X (formerly Twitter), the organization reports that, so far, it has rained 15.33 inches in Los Angeles, 13.58 inches in San Francisco, 10.89 inches in San Diego and 12.91 inches in Seattle. Clearly, we’re living in a different world this year.
Likely echoing all Angelenos’ feelings, the National Weather Service Los Angeles jokingly replied to the original tweet by inviting Seattle to get back on top of its precipitation game.
@NWSSeattle , you can have your rain back now! (as we prepare for yet another weekend of rain and mountain snow here in #SoCal) #Cawx (?)
— NWS Los Angeles (@NWSLosAngeles) April 12, 2024
“You can have your rain back now!,” reads the tweet by the agency—voicing how we’ve pretty much all felt these past few rainy weekends.
Speaking to Newsweek, National Weather Service meteorologist Steve Reedy explained that this year’s El Niño climate pattern is likely behind the rain-related shifts. “Typically, when we have an El Niño winter what ends up happening is that the storm path actually gets pushed a little further southward [compared to Seattle],” the expert said to the publication.
According to the forecast, brighter, drier days are ahead—and swelteringly hot ones if you’re headed to the second weekend of Coachella—but we will forever remember the three days in February when parts of L.A. got as much rain as New York does in three months.