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Published on 12/04/1995 All articles from this issue

It's December and Christmas shoppers are still wearing shorts

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By Clyde Noel / Town Crier Staff Writer

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas every where you go? These days, shoppers on Main and State streets are wearing summer shorts and walking around in flimsy T-shirts.

What a difference a year makes. Last year at this time, the ski slopes in Tahoe were bathed in snow and dotted with skiers. This year, it's so warm that artificial snow melts as it hits the ground.

"We are going from the wettest weather to one of the driest and warmest," said weather expert Edward Rexworthy. "This relative heat wave is making November one of the warmest on record and I can't remember ever having no snow in the Sierras this late in the season."

Rexworthy kept records for the Town Crier for more than 40 years until he retired and moved to Los Gatos last year. He still dabbles with weather forecasting and even though we only had a trace of rains this season, he said it's always this way after a wet season.

The accompanying chart shows 50 years of rainfall for Los Altos. The figures were collected from Rexworthy's home one block from Rancho Shopping Center. The bar chart shows that after every large rainfall, the following year has had less rain than the previous year. The statistical mean for the 50 years is 17.67 inches of rain every year from July 1 to June 30.

"Normally we have a high pressure system over the Pacific Ocean in summer time," Rexworthy said. "and that system drops down in the winter time and follows a path from west to east and brings rain with it. This year, the high pressure system has not broken down over the ocean and it remains further north than normal."

With the high pressure system continuing on its summer time path, this past week it created flood conditions for Oregon and Washington coasts. Last year at this time we had 3.84 inches of rain.

Rexworthy said that even though we have had little rain this year, the dams are still full, due to last year's the extensive rainfall.

Just relax, Rexworthy said. "We always get rain in winter. Just look at the charts. It just won't be like one of those long lines on the chart. "