Los Angeles usually receives several inches of rain in the first few months of its rainy season, but this year the city has only recorded a fifth of an inch downtown since the spring, the second driest period in almost 150 years of record keeping.

Along with fierce Santa Ana winds ignited two major fast-moving wildfires in Los Angeles County in January.

The fires were fanned by severe winds and exacerbated by near-zero rainfall throughout Southern California.

At the same time, much of the northern third of the state has weathered nearly two months of storms, flooding, and even tornadoes.

Northern California is almost always wetter than the semi-arid southern half of the state, but the extreme degree of the north-south gap that has persisted for several months has stunned experts.

Snowfall to date has followed a similar pattern with relatively heavy snowpack accumulating in the northern Sierra Nevada and substantially below average levels in the southern Sierra.

This season's stark imbalance isn't bad in terms of water supply.

That's because northern California's rain and snow feed major reservoirs which provide much of the water used by Californians.

Statewide, average per capita water use has declined sharply since the 1990s, in spite of a growing population.

Last July, state officials approved controversial and costly mandatory conservation rules that force 405 cities and other urban suppliers serving about 95% of Californians to meet individualized water budgets that decline over time.

Increasingly pronounced weather extremes have been a growing area of interest among scientists and state officials who frequently cite weather whiplash as one of the most pressing climate-related challenges facing California.

UC Merced climatologist John Abatzoglou said that is certainly the California story, bouts of very wet to bouts of very dry.

Flipping within a single season, flipping year-to-year, hoping that it evens out in the end.

With CalMatters, I'm Alastair Bland.