John Wayne Airport will finish the month today having recorded only 0.06 inches of rain, the lowest March precipitation the airport has recorded since 1997, when it didn’t receive any rain, the National Weather Service says. And that 0.06 inches – officially a trace of rain – didn’t fall until before dawn Sunday.

The airport – which is centrally located in Orange County – has been something of a straggler. Since July 1, it’s received only 8.17 inches of rain. The historic average for this date is 11.57 inches. Other areas – notably, the county’s eastern canyons and foothills – have gotten about 12 inches of precipitation, fueling tremendous growth in grass and wildflowers.

And they might get a bit more.

“The county could get about a quarter-inch of rain on Tuesday and Wednesday,” says Dan Atkins, a weather service forecaster.

But there’s no significant rain in the forecast beyond that, and the county might be slipping into six months or so of dryness. As a result, say forecasters, the region will be reclassified from being abnormally dry to a state of moderate drought. And that reclassification could come before Memorial Day.

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