STORMWATCH 2003!!! Sure, it's easy to deride Southern California's obsessive news coverage of incoming precipitation. But it's important to remember that until 1943, Mount Wilson held the US record for rainfall in a 24-hour period -- 26.12 inches (that's about the yearly average for the San Gabriel Mountains; LA's annual average is 14 inches.) Other records: 2.6 inches in one hour (Long Beach, 1995) and 0.65 inches in one minute (Mount Wilson, 1926).