KTLA

Palm Springs sees rain on June 23 for the 1st time in a century

People visit the Forever Marilyn statue on its return to Palm Springs on June 20. Three days later, Palm Springs had rainfall — the city’s first recorded rainfall on June 23 since 1922.(Frederic J. Brown / AFP / Getty Images)

Rainfall in June in Southern California is pretty rare, but in Palm Springs, it’s unheard of.

That changed Wednesday, though, when a smidge of precipitation — barely three hundredths of an inch — sprinkled the region amid overcast skies.

The shower marked the first rain Palm Springs has recorded on that day — June 23 — since at least 1922, when the desert city began tracking precipitation, according to Elizabeth Schenk, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s San Diego station. Temperature records in the city date back to 1893, she said.

A low pressure system over coastal waters drew “remnant moisture” from a tropical system off the coast of Mexico, generating a smattering of thunderstorms over the mountains and into the desert, said Bruno Rodriguez, another meteorologist with the weather service’s San Diego station.

Read the full story on LATimes.com.