Meanwhile, Southern California Worries

Southern California took the brunt of recent West Coast rains:

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.

...Bill Patzert, a climatologist for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge, said there's ominous similarity between this early winter and that of 2004-05: Both brought eye-popping amounts of rain. In fact, December 2004 brought so much that it set a record for December rainfall for the 20th and 21st centuries — but this month's more than 10 inches of rain topped even that.

During that memorable winter six years ago, the rains kept coming, fueled by an El Niño that pounded the region into the new year, provoking destructive debris flows, floods and landslides across the region. Downtown L.A. saw more than 37 inches of rain that year, well above its average of 15.

But this year, the opposite of El Niño — a La Niña, or a cooling of waters in the central Pacific — could assert itself and bring drier conditions in January and February.

Still, for now, rain is the name of the game, Patzert said: "The bottom line is, something is imminent if the rains continue like this."