The organic curves of chaparral-cloaked Condor National Forest.
I’m growing like a seedRain’s been falling on me
— KT Tunstall, Feel It All
“I’m wondering if we won’t see August thunderstorms.”
I wrote that in June, a freak premonition.
The feeling came after two days of uncommon rain showers, which had followed the unrelenting foggy gloom and weep of a spring that never quite sprung and an exceptionally wet winter.
Though the calendar read summer, something seemed to suggest the showers were not yet over as we headed into what was typically the driest time of year.
I hadn’t thought of July. It was August for some peculiar reason. Not September.
And in August it rained.
The rain fell like we had not seen in many decades, like some people had never seen.
The summer rain was extraordinary!
Larry runs the green grass in Sespe Wilderness, an uncommon sight in summer. (September 2023)
In downtown Santa Barbara 0.59″ fell in August of 2023. That does not seem like much, but usually no rain at all comes in August or only a heavy misting from marine layer off the sea.
Not in forty years — not since the incredible 1.55″ unloaded during the El Nino year of 1982/3 — has more rain fallen downtown for the month.
In 1935 0.70″ was recorded downtown; the only other season on record dating back to 1899 to surpass 2023.
San Marcos Pass station recorded nearly a full inch of rain; an all-time record dating back to 1965, at least.
The historical record shows the following for August beginning in 1965, but with apparently no measurable rain coming until 1983:
1983/84 .48″
1990/91 .36
1996/97 .34
2005/06 .12
2006/07 .03
2008/09 .11
2020/21 .12
2022/23 .97
Spring greens oddly getting greener in fall. (October 2023)
Water still held openly in small tanks in October.
Tell-tale sign. A summer-grown cactus pad born of the August downpour, green and plump and smooth with the banked moisture. (October 2023)
Ventura County backcountry got soaked last August. Rainfall was heavy and widespread.
Lake Piru station measured in at 4.21″ and 3.16″ fell clear back in Lockwood Valley, deep in the mountains’ rain shadow.
In October, dispatches from other parts of the state told of an unseasonal desert bloom and an ephemeral lake filling Badwater Basin in Death Valley.
Los Angeles Times : Death Valley gleams with water, wildflowers and color
Following the rains of August came the flush of fall.
Summer turned slightly to spring again rather than drying further into fall. The burst of water remade Condor National Forest in seldom seen ways, the change subtle but significant.
The summer’s green grass and blooming flowers and especially the flow of water appeared all the more fantastical after many dry years of extreme and exceptional drought, among the most stricken in the state and for the longest time.
And yet I wonder if anybody noticed. So we tack a note to the board here now, that a moment be remembered.
Late-season blooms in December tell of the rains of August.
Jack Elliott's Santa Barbara Adventure 
The combination of the Alisal Fire followed by two years of twice or more than average rain has turned Refugio Canyon into a green paradise. This year we are past 80 inches of rain. Never before springs are appearing. Nature can be kind at times.
4″ in a day is extremely common here in northern England unfortunately. We’ve had very few dry days this year and everything is more or less underwater – it will probably take a 6 month drought to dry it out now and I’m sure we won’t get one of those unfortunately.
Thank you for this article.