Rain, Rain -- And It Won’t Be Going Away

Enough already.

We get the point.

“It’s been pretty stubborn,” concedes Jon Erdman, a meteorologist with Weatherdata, which provides forecasts for The Times. “We’ve just got all this moisture left over that gets squeezed out in showers.”

Sounds familiar.

For days, that moisture has hung over Orange County like a leaky canopy. Every few minutes, the canopy springs a leak, and a few mini-droplets fall. Then someone patches the leak and things dry out. Until the next leak.

“Looks like mostly cloudy skies with a chance of scattered showers,” Erdman continues, reading today’s forecast--or was it yesterday’s? Hard to tell.

If the rain were actually slashing at the ground, with high winds and a few blasts of thunder, it might not be so dreary. But the in-betweenness of it all.

For meteorologists such as Erdman, there’s nothing to do but predict more of the same.

Over the next 48 hours, he says, sunny Orange County can expect skies the color of an Ohio State University jersey.

(If all those Midwestern winter visitors weren’t so visibly disappointed, conspiracy theorists might be having a field day.)

They stand around, eyeing the heavens, wondering who to see about a refund on that vacation package. Sorry, folks. No refunds, and no relief in sight.

“There really isn’t any low-pressure system or cold front” that will move the storm along, Erdman says.

So, in summation: “We’ll have a few lingering showers,” he says of tonight’s weather. “And then some partial clearing. And then it should be variable clouds on Saturday. With the chance of showers developing late.”

And Saturday night?

“We’ve got showers moving in late Saturday night from the next system, which is currently over Hawaii.”

Sounds familiar.