A few days of light to heavy rainfall have more than doubled the year-to-date records at monitoring sites around Santa Barbara County and resulted in looser fire restrictions in the Los Padres National Forest.
Santa Maria’s Public Works station recorded 3.24 inches in the seven days prior to Dec. 16. The county’s high in that window appeared to be 5.7 inches at San Marcos Pass, with a low of .99 inches at the Cuyama Fire Station.
Considering the new moisture levels, Los Padres National Forest officials in Goleta said the area has now transitioned out of high fire season—though they still recommend caution. This sentiment is echoed farther north, too: “While we will not know if this winter will finally bring us out of this long drought, we welcome the last few wetting storms so we can take a breath from a fire season that extended from April of 2013 until now,” Chief Robert Lewin, CAL FIRE’s San Luis Obispo Unit Chief, said in a press release.
In fact, conditions have improved to the point that fire officials announced plans to launch a series of prescribed burns in the Santa Lucia Ranger District, starting as early as this month.
This article appears in Dec 18-25, 2014.