Jan. 22, 2013 — Lassen County resident Dr. Owen Bateson has collected data on precipitation at his home on Gold Run Road since 1981, and he reports the amount of moisture that’s fallen from the sky is up — at least through late December of last year.

The average for the month of December, according to Bateson’s records, is 3.69 inches, but as of late December, “we’ve already had 8.51 inches,” Bateson said. “That puts us at 230 percent of average for the whole month of December, but that doesn’t even include what might happen tomorrow and the next day.”

That brings Lassen County to 17.29 inches for the year to date which runs from July 1 to June 30.

“To this date, we are at 194 percent of average,” Bateson said. “Normally our average would be 8.92 inches, but we’ve had 17.29.”

Bateson said his records may be the most complete in the county.

“The county comes to me because I have better records than they do,” Bateson said.

According to Bateson, only a fool would try to predict how much rainfall we will receive during the rest of the year.

“It could dry up Monday and we could have the worst, driest spring we’ve ever seen,” Bateson said. “You never know.”

Consider this. Bateson said as recently as a month and a half ago the National Weather Service was predicting our area would have 40 percent of average rainfall this year.

“They’re obviously totally incorrect,” Bateson said. “People ask me to predict stuff, and I tell them I’ve been here for a long time, and I’m not stupid. Only dumb people try to predict what the weather’s going to do around here. You can never know what’s going to happen. It’s just one of those things.”