San Diego Rainfall - by Year and Season

San Diego Rain History

As a San Diego resident I've found it hard to find a convenient place to find annual rainfall data for San Diego in a useful format. Most records are kept by calendar year, but San Diego's weather is highly seasonal with most of the rain falling in the November-March time period. I have developed a file of monthly San Diego rainfall data which presents the data by both calendar year AND by season (running from July to Jun).

The Data File

The file is comma delimited, in the format of:

Year, Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec, YearTotal, NextJan, NextFeb, NextMar, NextApr, NextMay, NextJun, SeasonTotal

DOWNLOAD: File is here (sandiegorain.txt). The data will come up as a separate page. It is easy to bring the data into a spreadsheet. Save the text page. Then open a spreadsheet program and import the data from the saved text file. I try to keep the file "reasonably current". If I'm behind, Contact me and I may update it right away for you - so little time and so many other things to do!

The data was derived from NWS records going back to 1850, the link I use to have here no longer works. Some of the totals in the early years may result from incomplete data. Also the rain gage wasn't always at the same exact location, there's a story about this somewhere on the web. I recall it being in something like nine different locations since 1850.

If you are looking for official NWS statistics for recent days and months, go to http://www.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=sgx

The top 11 years by season are:

1883-1884 25.97
1940-1941 24.74
2004-2005 22.49
1977-1978 18.71
1921-1922 18.65
1992-1993 18.31
1982-1983 18.26
1951-1952 18.16
1997-1998 17.78
1994-1995 17.12
1885-1886 16.96