It’s possible Southern California has never been as wet as it is right this minute.
Waterfalls, swimming holes, rivers, lakes, once-in-a-while creeks, part-time reservoirs; the greener stretches of Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties have all of these features. Most are more or less visible (and enjoyable) depending on that year’s rainy season.
And this year, two days before the start of spring, all of the region’s natural and unnatural water spots are filled at levels that few local hikers and waterfall watchers and swimming hole enthusiasts (hey, they’re a thing) have ever seen. Two straight years of nearly twice as much rain as usual will do that.
“The water was just flowing,” gushed Toni Perez, a retired business owner and teacher, two days after she took an early March march up to Switzer Falls, a popular waterfall and sometimes swimming hole about 3,200 feet up in the mountains north of Pasadena.
“The waterfall was really full and pretty. And the pool was deep. And somebody put in a swing out there. It was, oh, gosh, it was so beautiful!”
Excuse Perez’s enthusiasm. At 68, the Los Angeles native is two-plus years into a second life of sorts, after receiving a double lung transplant in the summer of 2021. A few weeks after getting the new lungs, she jogged a 5-K and, soon after that, she began a new hobby — hiking in the local mountains.
The recent trip to Switzer Falls was her second in recent months. The first came in late fall, before the year’s rainy season had really kicked into gear. Conditions shifted from moist to aquarium-esque.
“That time, the falls were still there, and so was the pool,” Perez said. “But it wasn’t as nice as it is now.
“It’s wetter than ever, I think.
Rain data collected for the Los Angeles area over the past 145 years suggest she’s right.
Though neither of the past two rainy seasons set an all-time, single-season record, the period from 2022 through 2024 might…
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